Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)

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 Clarel: 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.

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Auteur

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Robert Faggen teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

Contenu

Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)Introduction Suggestions for Further Reading A Note on the Texts Selected Poems From Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)

The Portent Misgivings The Conflict of Convictions Apathy and Enthusiasm The March into Virginia Ball's Bluff DuPont's Round Fight Donelson In the Turret The Temeraire A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight Shiloh Battle of Stone River, Tennessee The House-top The Armies of the Wilderness On the Photograph of a Corps Commander The Swamp Angel Sheridan at Cedar Creek The College Colonel A Dirge for McPherson At the Cannon's Mouth The March to the Sea The Frenzy in the Wake The Surrender at Appomattox A Canticle The Martyr "The Coming Storm" Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh The Muster "Formerly a Slave." Magnanimity Baffled On the Slain Collegians America Verses Inscriptive and Memorial On the Home Guards The Fortitude of the North An Uninscribed Monument On the Grave On a Natural Monument Commemorative of a Naval Victory The Scout toward Aldie Lee in the Capitol A Meditation Supplement From Clarel (1876) Part I: Jerusalem I. The Hostel IV. Of the Crusaders XIII. The Arch XVII. Nathan Part II: The Wilderness IV. Of Mortmain XI. Of Deserts XXII. Concerning Hebrews XXXI. The Inscription XXXIV. Mortmain Reappears XXXV. Prelusive XXXVI. Sodom Part III: Mar Saba V. The High Desert XXIX. Rolfe and the Palm XXXII. Empty Stirrups Part IV: Bethlehem XX. Derwent and Ungar XXI. Ungar and Rolfe XXX. The Valley of Decision XXXI. Dirge XXXII. Passion Week XXXIII. Easter XXXIV. Via Crucis XXXV. Epilogue From John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) John Marr and Other Sailors John Marr Tom Deadlight Jack Roy Sea-Pieces The Haglets Minor Sea-Pieces The Man-of-War Hawk The Tuft of Kelp The Maldive Shark Crossing the Tropics The Berg The Enviable Isles Pebbles From Timoleon (1891) Timoleon After the Pleasure Party The Night-march The Ravaged Villa The Margrave's Birthnight Magian Wine The Garden of Metrodorus The Weaver Lamia's Song In a Garret Monody Lone Founts The Bench of Boors The Enthusiast Art Buddha C--'s Lament Shelley's Vision Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century The Marchioness of Brinvilliers The Age of the Antonines Herba Santa Fruit of Travel Long Ago Venice In a Bye-Canal Pisa's Leaning Tower In a Church of Padua Milan Cathedral The Parthenon Greek Masonry Greek Architecture The Apparition In the Desert The Great Pyramid From Weeds and Wildings Chiefly: With a Rose or Two (1924) Clover The Little Good-Fellows Trophies of Peace The American Aloe on Exhibition The New Rosicrucians The New Ancient of Days Immolated The Rusty Man Camoens Montaigne and His Kitten Gold in the Mountain A Spirit Appeared to Me Hearts-of-gold Pontoosuce Billy in the Darbies (from Billy Budd) Notes Index of First Lines