Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War [Paperback]

Herman Melville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2005

Herman Melville (1819-1891) stopped writing fiction after the publication of The Confidence Man: His Masquerade ] in 1857; as he entered his forties, he turned to poetry as his literary avocation. His first published book of poems was Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), a meditation on the Civil War in short lyric and narrative verses, and a work as ambitious and rich as any that issued from his pen. Melville was well acquainted with the war. He made many trips south to visit his cousin Henry Gansevoort, a Union officer--on one such trip, he was active in an unsuccessful pursuit of Confederate raider John Mosby. He had met Abraham Lincoln in Washington, and called upon General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia in 1864. And his position within his family, whose members were involved in almost every aspect of the war, was close enough to allow him a rare vantage point on this country's greatest conflict. But, Battle-Pieces is anything but epic. Rather than celebratory, the tone of Melville's poem is grievous and disconsolate. "Unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency" (as Melville puts it in his preface), the poems do not attempt to paint a broad picture of the whole of the war, but rather represent disjoint aspects, each faithful to Melville's impulsive, modern, yet realist view of the tragedy.This facsimile edition of Battle-Pieces includes 72 poems on almost every major campaign, battle, and event; Melville's own detailed historical notes and his supplementary essay on Reconstruction; and a new introduction by Lee Rust Brown, who teaches English at the University of Utah and is the author of The Emerson Museum. An American classic is thus available once again.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

After publishing five novels, some of which flourished and others that floundered, Melville turned his pen to poetry. Melville based his Civil War poems on firsthand experience, and rather than glorify battle, he depicts the horrors and the waste of it.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

America
Apathy And Enthusiasm
The Apparition (a Retrospect)
The Armies Of The Wilderness (1863-4)
At The Cannon's Mouth
Aurora-borealis; Commemorative Of Dissolution Of Armies,1865
Ball's Bluff; A Reverie
The Battle For The Bay (august, 1864)
The Battle For The Mississippi (april, 1862)
Battle Of Stone River, Tennessee; View From Oxford Cloisters
A Canticle: Significant Of National Exaltation Close Of War
Chattanooga (november, 1863)
The College Colonel
'the Coming Storm' (a Picture By R. S. Gifford)
Commemorative Of A Naval Victory
The Conflict Of Convictions
The Cumberland
A Dirge For Mcpherson; Killed In Front Of Atlanta
Donelson (february, 1862)
Dupont's Round Fight (november, 1861)
The Eagle Of The Blue
An Epitaph
The Fall Of Richmond
'formerly A Slave' (an Idealized Portrait, By E. Vedder)
Fortitude Of The North Under The Disaster Of 2nd Manassas
The Frenzy In The Wake; Sherman's Advance ... Carolinas
Gettysburg; The Check (june, 1863)
A Grave Near Petersburg, Virginia
The House-top; A Night Piece
In The Prison Pen (1864)
In The Turret (march, 1862)
Inscription For The Graves At Pea Ridge, Arkansas
Inscription, For Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg
Lee In The Capitol (april, 1866)
Look-out Mountain; The Night Fight (november, 1863)
Lyon
Magnanimity Baffled
Malvern Hill (july, 1862)
The March Into Virginia
The March To The Sea (december, 1864)
The Martyr; Indicative Of Passion Of Peoples April 15, 1865
A Meditation
Misgivings
The Mound By The Lake
The Muster; Suggested By Two Days' Review At Washington
On A Natural Monument In A Field Of Georgia
On Sherman's Men; Who Fell In The Assault Kenesaw Mountain
On The Grave, Of A Young Cavalry Officer
On The Home Guards; Who Perished ... Lexington, Missouri
On The Men Of Maine Killed In Victory Of Baton Rouge
On The Photograph Of A Corps Commander
On The Slain At Chickamauga
On The Slain Collegians
Presentation To Authorities By Privates, Of Colors Captured
Rebel Color-bearers At Shiloh
The Released Rebel Prisoner (june, 1865)
A Requiem For Soldiers Lost In Ocean Transports
The Returned Volunteer To His Rifle
Running The Batteries
The Scout Toward Aldie
Sheridan At Cedar Creek
Shiloh; A Requiem
The Stone Fleet; An Old Sailor's Lament (december, 1861)
Stonewall Jackson (ascribed To A Virginian)
Stonewall Jackson; Mortally Wounded At Chancellorsville
The Surrender At Appomattox
The Swamp Angel
The Temeraire
An Uninscribed Monument - Battle Of The Wilderness
A Utilitarian View Of The Monitor's Fight
The Victor At Antietam (1862)
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: IndyPublish.com (September 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1421954346
• ISBN-13: 978-1421954349
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetic Prose, but not Prosaic Verse, March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems (Paperback)

It has been said of Herman Melville that his prose is poetic, but his poetry is not. In his time, in fact, his poetry was little-read and quite unpopular. Of course, _Moby Dick_ received only a lukewarm reception back then. Now, his poetry deserves a reassessment.

First, _Battle-Pieces_ should be credited as artistic, sometimes beautiful, poetry. Some of the poems are somewhat doggeral, and would be much improved by a few less forced rhymes. Others, however, are truly moving.

In these latter poems, Melville conveys the horrors of the war--and occasionally the humanity that shone through, uniting the brothers across the battlefield. Few men or women of the time had the experience (he participated in a chase of a Southern soldier) and writing ability to show us this time so effectively. As a result, he produced what, in my opinion, is a book at least as good as his most well-known novel.

At the end of the book he includes an essay on Reconstruction, in which he pleads for an easy reconciliation with the conquered South, more along the lines with Lincoln and Johnson's plans than the Radicals'. While somewhat disappointing (we'd like the man who created QueeQueg to support Southern blacks' rights a little more), the essay is well-written, and allows us to read the nonfictional beliefs of a man we usually associate with fiction--just as the poems let us read the verse of a writer of prose.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Herman Melville's Civil War Poetry, April 3, 2006

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems (Paperback)

Melville's "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" (1867) intersects two of my great interests: the Civil War and American literature. This collection of poetry has never been well-known and critical opinion about it has always been varied and mostly lukewarm. But I have returned to it many times for its meditiative quality, for Melville's varied and conflicted insights about the Civil War, and for the tortuous quality of its poetry. This collection includes the full text of Melville's poems, including his notes to the poems and the prose essay, titled "Supplement", with which the book concludes. I find the book invaluable and eloquent in understanding the Civil War, contemporary reactions to it, and Melville himself.

In his short introduction, Melville tells the reader that the poems were almost entirely composed following the conclusion of the War. They were composed at different times and with no thought of unity in the collection. Thus they are not an epic or informed by a single theme (although the unfinished dome of the Capitol runst through them as a metaphor) but rather present a series of separate, disjointed thoughts on the war. Most of the descriptions in the book derive from journalistic reports, although Melville had more first-hand experience with the Civil War than is sometimes realized. The major part of the collection, "Battle-Pieces" begins with John Brown's raid and ends with a poem title "America" in which Melville ponders the changes the Civil War had already wrought, and would bring about in the future in the United States.

As a student of the Civil War, I find it valuable to read this book for Melville's depictions of conflicts, including Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the clash between the Monitor and the Virginia, Stones River, Antietam, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, Appomatox, and much else. He gives some details of the battles while reflecting on the courage of the soldiers, the terrible carnage of the War, the scourge of slavery that brought it about, and the uncertain and ambiguous future of the United States upon the War's conclusion. Melville realized that the War did not lead to clear conclusions or to false optimism. His poetry reflects the difficulty of a complex mind thinking about a terrible war. For this reason, the book has seemed pallid to some readers. But its lack of force is due to the depth of the struggle in Melville's mind to understand the conflict.

The book is written in verse with meters and rhymes that frequently are awkward. Here again, some readers take this as a sign that poetry was not a congenial form to a Melville burned-out from the effort of writing his novels. But for much of the verse, the awkwardness of the poetry reflects the difficulty of the War as Melville works to understand the conflict and to present differing perspectives. Some of the selections, including "The Portent", "Shiloh","Rebel Colorbearers at Shiloh", the two poems about Stonewall Jackson, "Formerly a Slave", "On the Slain Collegians", and "America" seem to me to work as poetry. Other individual poems are, perhaps, more valuable for what they try to say than for Melville's poetical skills in saying it. On the whole, I think the quality of these jagged works is high. When read with Mellville's notes, they have a quality of trying to communicate directly with the reader.

Most of the successful poems in this collection are short, but I found some of the longer ones, such as "Donelson," "The Amries of the Wilderness" and "Lee in the Capitol" cast important light upon their subjects. It is interesting that in much of the poetry and in the "Supplement" with which the book concludes, Melville took a reconciliatisnt view of the conflict and its aftermath. Brave committed Americans fought on both sides, Melville tells the reader, although one side had right with it, and he urged Americans and their leaders to put aside their differences and work towards reuniting the Nation. This view has come under deserved scrutiny in recent years, as many have questioned whether it did justice to the needs of freed African Americans. But it is valuable to be reminded of how contemporaries saw the issue, as reflected in the words of some highly complex and thoughtful minds.

Although Melville's Civil War poetry will never win widespread critical or popular appeal, I have gained a great deal from repeated readings of this work. Students of the Civil War and of American literature can only benefit from knowing and reflecting upon it.

Robin Friedman

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What The Library Journal Does Not Know., October 2, 2002

By 

Richard H. Cox (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems (Literary Classics) (Paperback)

I am one of the editors of the Prometheus Books edition of Melville's superb book on the Civil War. Alas, the Library Journal review, posted for the volume, is pathetic: two sentences, only one on Melville's poems, and that one half wrong, for Melville had NO direct experience of actual fighting in the war. What is more, there is no reference to the extensive supplementary material in our volume--including fine essays by Helen Vendler and Rosanna Warren. Caveat emptor regarding any such "review" of the "critics."