Melville and Poetry

Melville and Poetry

Poetry was a life-long pursuit of Melville, particularly after the commercial and critical ìfailureî of his later novels. Elizabeth Shaw Melville wrote to her mother in 1859 that ìHerman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell any one, for you know how such things get around.î Few readers of Moby-Dick were aware that Melville was a poet, although he had published Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War in 1866 and the 18,000-line Clarel in 1876. Vincentís volume reprints the published poems (though only selections from Clarel), poems embedded in Mardi and Moby-Dick, and transcriptions of unpublished poetry, including ìBilly in the Darbies.î

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