Selected Poems of Herman Melville

by Robert Penn (ed) Warren

While best known for such novels as his monumental Moby-Dick , Herman Melville was also an extraordinarily gifted poet. This is the most complete anthology of Melville’s poetry ever published in a single volume. It features a large selection from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War , along with Melville’s own notes and prose supplement; cantos from all four books of A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land ; selections from Melville’s later books, Timoleon , John Marr and Other Sailors , and Weeds and Wildings , Chiefly, with a Rose or Two ; as well as a number of his powerful and lesserknown uncollected poems. This volume will usher in a new appreciation for Melville’s poetic gifts.Includes a new introduction to Melville's life and later career as a poet during the Civil War and Gilded Age, as well as notes and suggestions for further reading

Genres: Poetry, Literature, American, Classics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Herman Melville’s poetry is an enigma. The man wrote poetry when he wrote prose. Passages from Moby Dick can be easily laid out in iambic pentameter, with the rich rhythms and imagery you’d expect from a great poet. Yet his poetry proves something else – a bit stiff, slavish to the meter, with cloying rhymes.

His mistake, it seems to me, is trying to take his epic, sprawling style and fit it in a tight, lyric format. The short lined lyric doesn’t do him justice, and I don’t think he wrote anything in blank verse – which you would think would be is forte. That said, he wrote some fine poems – the John Marr collection being his best in my opinion.

This edition, collected and introduced by Robert Penn Warren, offers an excellent sample of Melville’s poetry, covering poems from his entire life. Warren’s introduction offers one of the best, most comprehensive overviews of Melville’s poetry that you’ll find outside some obscure literary magazine. If you’re interested in Melville and/or his poetry, this is a great starting point.

Battle-Pieces *** -- I found this to be a rather strange work. It doesn’t have the vitality or sweep of Whitman’s Drum Taps. Melville struggles to understand the Civil War and its carnage, but his language and ideas seem trapped in metric forms and rhymes. (1/12)

Clarel ** – This is a difficult, rambling poem to read and understand. The form cramps Melville’s sprawling style, and the rigid meter is difficult, requiring someone of more skill than Melville (or most writers) possess. (1/12)

John Marr and Other Sailors **** – This brief collection is outstanding. Here, Melville adopts a longer line – rhyming but not metrically rigid – that gives him the freedom and space he needs to express himself. The “Sailor Poems” that start the collection are particularly good, though they all have the same story/theme: An old man looking back on his sailing life. Billy Budd probably started as part of this collection, but took on a life of its own and Melville began working on it separately. If anyone is interested in Melville poetry, I’d suggest starting here. (1/12)

[17CECO · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up a 1944 New Directions copy on a whim at a used bookstore. To glance at Melville's early poems but also b/c I wanted an early-days New Directions publication. They were founded in 1934. These poems are, uh, putrid! Melville scholars and 19th C Americanists will find something to do with them but if yr interested in poetry steer clear. Not one of ND's bravery reprints. One point of curiosity was "The Berg," an entry into the genre of works about how poets find grotesque and powerful polar nature. There's a riff about the berg's huge death that might be of interest alongside Cowper's iceberg poem and the long history of what gazing at icebergs has meant and means now that the world is on fire//in the thick of the capitaloscene: "Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast, / With mortal damps self-overcast; / Exhaling still thy dankish breath-- / Adrift dissolving, bound for death" (17).

[Jim McGurn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some tough stuff. The notes in the back are very helpful. The last one, Pontusuce, speaks to me as I know the Lake a little. I spent a pleasant summer day there once, dozing on a bluff above and curiously watching a watercraft yanking up clumps of algae or seaweed. "All dies!---"

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing poetry.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprised by the nuanced opinion of the Civil War

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this in English 40 taught by Professor Spengemann.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

only read 'Battle-pieces' and 'John Marr'. RPW's intro and notes are useful.

[Myhte]

Hail! voyagers, hail!
Time flies full fast; life soon is o'er;
And ye may mourn,
That hither borne,
Ye left behind our pleasant shore.