Herman Melville: Complete Poems (LOA #320): Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War / Clarel / John Marr and Other Sailors / Timoleon / Posthumous & Uncollected

By Herman Melville and Hershel Parker

An unprecedented single-volume edition of one of America's greatest poets, released to celebrate his bicentennial

Best known today for his novels and stories, the author of Moby-Dick was a devoted and accomplished poet. Ranging from Civil War battlefields to the haunted byways of the Holy Land, from close observation of nature to deep philosophical mediation, Melville's poetry was central to his life and art and he justly ranks with Whitman and Dickinson as one of America's three greatest 19th-century poets. Complete here for the first time in the fourth and final installment in the Library of America's Herman Melville edition, are all four books of poetry he published in his lifetime plus uncollected poems and the poems from two projected volumes left unfinished at the time of his death, allowing readers to appreciate for themselves the extraordinary range of his poetic achievement.  

Melville's first book of poetry, Battle-Pieces (1866), remains one of the very few great American books to have emerged from the Civil War. Dedicated to the Union dead, it is both a deeply philosophical work of mourning and a fascinating record of events, tracking campaigns and battles and the war's immediate aftermath. With a cast of characters surpassing that of Moby-Dick, the epic poem Clarel (1876), about an American divinity student's pilgrimage to the Holy Land, has been likened to Paradise Lost and The Waste Land as a profound exploration of the problem of belief. Also included in Complete Poems are the two privately issued books John Marr (1888) and Timoleon (1891), which contain some of Melville's finest lyric verse. Rounding out the volume are the extraordinary poems from his two unfinished manuscripts, Weeds and Wildings and Parthenope, along with miscellaneous uncollected poems. All of the poems are presented in the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry texts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781598536195

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet who received wide acclaim for his earliest novels, such as Typee and Redburn, but fell into relative obscurity by the end of his life. Today, Melville is hailed as one of the definitive masters of world literature for novels including Moby Dick and Billy Budd, as well as for enduringly popular short stories such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Bell-Tower.

Reviews for Herman Melville

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd say I'm neither a fan of Melville nor a detractor. I feel mixed about much of his work, but almost all of his work I've read were worth the read, original and influential, and memorable. Moby Dick: This is a deeply weird book, not what I expected from a 19th Century classic, and my rating expresses my mixture of admiration, boredom and outright irritation at Melville's wretched self-indulgence and excesses. I know that's nigh to sacrilegious. Introductions to this book call it "the greatest American novel ever written" and the "greatest sea book ever written." I certainly recommend trying it on the grounds of cultural literacy and if you have any interest in modern literature or the art of writing. But as presumptuous as it might be to say so, I could wish Melville had a much more ruthless editor. Much of Moby Dick reads like a sloppy first draft. Then there's the just plain trippy. Loads of chapters that are essays on all things about whaling. Others that are prose poems or what seem to be displaced random snatches of Huh??? Yet some of Melville's Shakespearean language is striking and resonant. A lot of the characters are memorable, beyond just Ahab: Pip, the Harpooners such as Tashtego and Fedallah, the Carpenter and the Blacksmith, the three mates, Starbuck, Stubb and Flask. Cut away all the blubber...er...digressions, there's an epic mythic story at the core, Three-and-a-halfThe Confidence-Man: This book had just about every aspect I do hate in Melville (other than the massive digressions) squared. For one, this is Melville at his least subtle. The title is "The Confidence Man: His Masquerade" and it takes place aboard the Steamer Fidele on April Fool's Day. By the third paragraph we read of a placard about an imposter in the area. And if by then you don't get that the theme is how confidence and trust plays into the ability to be swindled, worry not--the characters will go on and on about the subject in ways no real people converse. I've heard this described as more of a Socratic dialogue than novel. All I can say is I far prefer Plato. One-and-a-half StarsPiazza Tales: This is a collection of 6 shorter pieces, not a novel, published in 1856. As a whole I far prefer them to Moby Dick or Billy Budd. I don't care for "The Piazza" (although it does boast the rarity of a female character in Melville) or "The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles" (10 sketches about the Galapagos Islands that are far more "tell" than "show.") "The Lightening-Rod Man" about a pushy door-to-door salesman is mildly amusing and "The Bell-Tower" is a rather traditional story reminiscent of Poe or Hawthorne. But the prizes of this collection are the two novellas: Benito Cereno and Bartleby, the Scrivener. Benito Cereno is a brilliant example of the "unreliable narrator" and the way that subverts the racist assumptions of the day (and the point of view character) is masterful. Bartleby I've heard described as Kafkaesque. It's black comedy, but it is funny. Four StarsBilly Budd: I've seen this described as allegory: like allegory, it often can come across as all too heavy handed. Billy Budd is the Christ-figure of almost pure good; Claggart is painted very much as a Satanic figure who hates Billy for his virtues. Captain Vere is a more complex figure. Given his position in this drama it would be easy to see him as Jehovah, as God the father, yet Melville speaks of his "mental disturbance." The narrator is intrusive--and he does things like say "for a literary sin then divergence will be"--and then goes on digressing. The narrator has a tone of omniscience, relates things only an omniscient narrator would know--then demurs he has complete knowledge and presents things as his guesses. The narration often struck me as ponderous, high-strung, melodramatic, and in describing Billy (described every several paragraphs as the "Handsome Sailor") so very, very gay. And yet there are some piercing psychological insights--and some really beautiful touches. (In the context of what was happening, the simple sentence "Billy ascended" was powerful and chilling.) Not a story I'd call a favorite, but worth reading. Three Stars

[walterhistory · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Poetry is regarded as the highest form of language yet very few have a full grasp of its innate beauty of expression. Here we see in this volume, Melville's poetry is truly a marvel of expression. Throughout his life, Melville was constantly overshadowed by better writers than he in spite of "Moby Dick" which in itself showed his greatness as an expressive writer. Initially, his "Typee" & "Omoo" hurt him because the reading public failed to notice how minutely detailed he was. It is his poetry that truly established his innate ability not only as a writer but also his standing among the others like Hawthorne, Irving, Longfellow, & Twain in his day. His "Clarel" was in a sense a classic compared to Longfellow's "Hiawatha" but it is his "Battle-pieces" poems that really showed his command of the English language. Overall, the reader will be pleased to read these poems as well as his "Clarel" & discover a true poet in every sense of the word.