Selected Poems of Herman Melville

by Herman Melville

The entries collected in the Selected Poems of Herman Melville were chosen with literary consideration foremost: they encompass a wide variety of nearly 25 years work in verse. Included here are pieces from his most important verse, but poems of lesser regard also appear in the interest of exploring Melville's artistic development and correlation to his novels.

Genres: Poetry, Literature, American, Classics

259 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

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.