The Poems of Herman Melville (Paperback)

by Herman Melville (Author), Douglas Robillard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
This collection of poetry is edited by Melville scholar Robillard, author of the book-length study Melville and the Visual Arts as well as a number of periodical articles. It presents the complete texts of "Battle-Pieces," "John Marr and Other Sailors," and "Timoleon," as well as additional manuscript poems. Also presented are excerpts from the long narrative poem Clarel to give the reader a taste of the style and content of this work. The editor's introduction, as well as his notes at the end of each section, are informative as well as appreciative of Melville's status as a poet. The reader who admires the writer's novels will discover that, especially in the Civil War and sea poems, Melville was as adept in poetry as he was in prose. The forthcoming Northwestern-Newberry volume of poetry in its collected works of the author will eventually replace all other editions, but until that comes out the reader will find this collection to be a good introduction to the craft of Melville the poet. Recommended for all library collections, especially those that lack a selection of this writer's poetry.DMorris Hounion New York City Technical Coll. Lib., Brooklyn
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Unlike his fiction, which has been popular and often reprinted, Melville’s poetry remains obscure: The last “collected poems” appeared in 1947 and “selected poems” in the 1970s, and only two books dealing exclusively with Melville’s poetry have appeared, both published in the 1970s. In this revised edition of his Poems of Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard updates the scholarship on the poetry through his introduction and notes and makes a case for a revised estimate of the importance of Melville as a poet.

The Poems of Herman Melville contains entire texts of “Battle-Pieces” (1866), “John Marr and Other Sailors” (1888), and “Timoleon” (1891). Selected cantos from “Clarel” are reprinted with accompanying notes and commentary.

Melville scholars will appreciate the depth and scope of this addition to the critical study of this American poet.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Kent State University Press; Rev Sub edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873386604
• ISBN-13: 978-0873386609
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #826,334 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is Melville's poetry really worth reading?, October 22, 2005

By	J. Ross "Dr Jack" (Auckland, NZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If the difficulty of getting hold of it is any indication, then most people think Melville's poetry *isn't* worth it. I've been waiting for years for the poetry volume of the Northwestern-Newberry edition to appear (it was promised for 2002, but still shows no signs of coming out). That will be the ultimate answer, as it'll include all the materials, commentaries, etc. that one could desire.

In the meantime, it makes a lot of sense to collect Melville's own three published volumes of verse in this beautifully compact book. This may not represent his poetic legacy as a whole, but it shows (at any rate) his public face as a poet.

And a very odd poet he is indeed. He has a lot in common with Thomas Hardy, I think: both are addicted to convoluted diction, impossibly complex and confining stanza forms and metrical schemes, a general sense of labouring over every line and of lack of music and ease.

Hardy is, nevertheless, a great poet. When the occasion demands it -- "The Convergence of the Twain" about the Titanic disaster, the superb poems of 1912 about his dead wife -- there's a kind of clumsy power about him which overpowers any reservations.

Melville's technical shortcomings are -- if anything -- even greater. The chains of rhyme and metre chafe him more than virtually any other nineteenth-century poet I can think of. He seems to have almost no natural facility for verse.

And yet (as all readers of his prose are aware) he is a genius. His prose-poetry in Moby-Dick, "Benito Cereno" and "Las Encantadas" is incomparable. And very now and then it glimmers out in the midst of the most clotted poems. There are certain lines from his Civil War poems included in Ken Burns' PBS documnentary series which seem almost to beat Whitman at his own game:

In glades they meet skull after skull
Where pine-cones lay ...
... Some start as in dreams,
And comrades lost bemoan:
By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged --
But the Year and the Man were gone. [102]

The equation between the skulls and the pine-cones is haunting, yet unobtrusive, and the invocation of Stonewall as a kind of force of nature works brilliantly. There's a mythic force in some of these Civil War poems which is unsurpassed.

Once you get over the surface defects, then, there's a lot encoded in the depths of Melville's verse -- a submerged continent of perceptions every bit as vivid as his fiction. The wait continues for the definitive edition, but for now I'm just grateful to have this one. It seems somehow characteristic that he should have to wait so long for the critical establishment to do justice to his talents in this field -- Herman Melville (both as a man and a writer), was, it seems , born to be overlooked.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poet in prose and not in poetry , May 16, 2005

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Consider Melville's prose in 'Moby Dick'. Its complexity and vast metaphorical reach, its narrative reflectiveness and great exploring quality. Melville in his prose is the master of the long line reaching out to encompass and define greater and greater worlds.
Melville of the poetry has his own poetry chopped up into small lines. And somehow the music is lost, the diction seems more archaic and trite, and the great sweep of the story is lost.
The mode of Melville's genius is prose, and his poetry is read today primarily as supplement to further understanding it.