Melville: The Making of the Poet (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780810124646)

"Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or for poetry in blubber?" the London John Bull remarked in October of 1851. And yet, the reviewer went on, "few books which professedly deal in metaphysics, or claim the parentage of the muses, contain as much true philosophy and as much genuine poetry as the tale of the Pequod's whaling expedition." A decade and a half before surprising the world with a book of Civil war poetry, Melville was already confident of what was "poetic" in his prose. As Hershel Parker demonstrates in this book, Melville was steeped in poetry long before he called himself a poet.

Here Parker, the dean of Melville studies, gives a compelling, in-depth account of how one of America's greatest writers grew into the vocation of a poet. His work corrects two of the most pernicious misconceptions about Melville perpetuated by earlier critics: that he repudiated fiction writing after Pierre, and that he hadn't begun writing poetry (let alone had a book of poems ready for publication) as early as 1860. In clearing up these misapprehensions, Parker gives a thorough and thoroughly involving account of Melville's development as a poet. Parker demonstrates for the first time just how crucial poetry was to Melville from childhood to old age, especially its re-emergence in his life after 1849. Drawing on Melville's shrewd annotations of great British poets and on his probing, skeptical engagement with commentaries on poetry (particularly by the great Scots reviewers), Parker paints a richly textured portrait of a hitherto unseen side of Herman Melville.


Author: Hershel Parker
ISBN-10: 0810124645
ISBN-13: 9780810124646
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/01/2008
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.26lbs
Size: 9.42h x 6.50w x 1.04d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 03/01/2008 pg. 83
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2008 pg. 265
New York Review of Books 06/26/2008 pg. 49