Poetry of Herman Melville -- (1819 - 1891)

Perhaps his poetry is underrated because of his fame as a novelist. Few writers, when you think of it, are known for more than one genre.

(I'm guessing there may be some but can't think of any offhand. Any suggestions?)

Yup, I like him too. The thoughts are good but he is so clumsy! I wish he'd read through these a time or two so that he could rub off the bumpy rhymes.

D'a. I can't think of anybody offhand who is good at it. There are plenty of artistes who have written a book or two.... Shirley Maclaine springs to mind.

Robert Graves?

Though HE considered his bookd pot-boilers, I loved 'em...

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote both poetry and prose; so did Poe. Shakespeare wrote poetry and plays, of course/ I think Longfellow wrote prose, as well... but I'd have to check.

Goethe, Schiller, Eichendorff, Heine, Bretano ... just to metion some of the best known Germans.

As said above, we had to read Melvilles poems as well in school.

Good suggestions re writers who go both ways. I did think of Shakespeare, but considered the plays and poetry as both verse forms. Sort of. But I forgot about Poe! Thanks for the reminders of German writers, Walter.

It's interesting, though, that these writers are almost all pre-20th Century. We're in an age of literary specialization, I guess.

I wonder why, since Melville is, as D'artagan implied, a minor poet and as wel've all noted, a fairly clumsy one. Maybe your class was concentrating on the Civil War era, Walter?

Minor, clumsy poets can give great pleasure to read. I love some of the shorter Melvilles.

Which ones do you love?

I'm just surprised that an English language course in Germany would feature Melville when there are so many other poets. Maybe his war poems would be appealing to a military college.

Here's a couple of his "best" Civil War images. According to this Civil War poetry website, Melville "chose not to participate
directly in the Civil War, except writing poetry about it. He had not witnessed any part of the conflict, until after the Spring of 1864. The claims that he made on his * "observation" above Vicksburg was (sic) purely a writer's imagination, no matter how vivid he described it. The
poem depicted a phase of General Ulysses S. Grant's troop movement to capture Vicksburg in 1863."


Running the batteries
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Stanza 4 and 14
*As observed from the anchorage above Vicksburg, April, 1863

A flame leaps out; they are seen;
Another and another gun roars;
We tell the course of the boats through the screen
By each further fort that pours,
And we guess how they jump from their beds on those shrouded shores.

The barge drifts doomed, a plague-struck one,
Shoreward in yawls the sailors fly.
But the gauntlet now is nearly run,
The spleenful forts by fits reply,
And the burning boat dies down in the morning's sky.