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Selected Poems of Herman Melville

herman melville robert penn warren

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"First published in 1970, Warren's edition remains the most comprehensive selection of Melville's poetry ever presented. It brings together the best of the Civil War poems from Battle-Pieces (1866), the portraits of sailors from John Marr (1888), and the autumnal lyrics from Timoleon (1891), as well as poems uncollected during Melville's lifetime. Central to the selection are several self-contained passages from Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876), a book-length work that Warren calls "an important document of our modernity ... in fact, a precursor to The Waste Land, with the same central image, the same flickering contrasts of the past and the present, the same charade of belief and unbelief."" Warren introduces his selection with a valuable interpretive essay, and also provides copious textual and critical notes.

From battle-pieces and aspects of the war --
The portent --
Misgivings --
The conflict of convictions --
The march into Virginia --
Ball's bluff --
Dupont's round fight --
The stone fleet --
Donelson --
The Temeraire --
A utilitarian view of the monitor's fight --
Shiloh --
Malvern Hill --
Battle of Stone River, Tennessee --
The house-top --
The armies of the wilderness --
On the photograph of a corps commander --
The swamp angel --
The college colonel --
"The coming storm" --
"Formerly a slave" --
On the slain collegians --
America --
The fortitude of the north --
Inscription --
An uninscribed monument --
A requiem --
On a natural monument --
Commemorative of a naval victory --
The scout toward Aldie --
Lee in the capitol --
A meditation --
Supplement --
From Clarel --
I: Jerusalem --
I: The hostel --
II: Of the crusaders --
XVII: Nathan --
II: The wilderness --
IV: Of Mortmain --
XXII: Concerning Hebrews --
XXVII: Vine and Clarel --
XXII: The inscription --
XXXIV: Mortmain reappears --
XXXVI: Sodom --
XXXIX: Obsequies --
III: Mar saba --
V: The high desert --
IV: Bethlehem --
XX: Derwent and Ungar --
XXX: The valley of decision --
XXXI: Dirge --
XXXII: Passion week --
XXXIII: Easter --
XXXIV: Via crucis --
XXV: Epilogue --
From John Marr and other stories with some sea-pieces --
John Marr --
Bridegroom Dick --
Tom Deadlight --
Jack Roy --
The Haglets --
The man-of-war hawk --
Old counsel --
The tuft of Kelp --
The maldive shark --
To Ned --
Crossing the tropics --
The berg --
From pebbles --
From Timoleon, etc. --
After the pleasure party --
The ravaged villa --
Monody --
Art --
Venice --
In a bye-canal --
In a church of Padua --
From the Parthenon --
From uncollected poems --
Immolated --
Pontoosuce --
Jonah's song (from Moby Dick) --
Billy in the Darbies (from Billy Budd).

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1924

This edition

Format
512 pages, Paperback
Published
September 10, 2004 by David R. Godine, Publisher
ISBN
9781567922691
ASIN
1567922694
Language
English

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About the author

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herman melville

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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.

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Rating(4.6 / 5.0, 8 votes)
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8 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
r4physics
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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!---"
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Ellenthefox
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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).

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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Crocodillius
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
rifqiace
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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only read 'Battle-pieces' and 'John Marr'. RPW's intro and notes are useful.
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machuzka
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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.
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