Timeline

• Sep 26, 2025: started reading.
• Oct 17, 2025: finished reading.

Review

Finished reading this collection during a recent trip to Oman. Felt oddly appropriate to finish on the Ballad of Billy Budd with the sound of waves from a short distance, gulls squawking overhead.

Melville’s turn to poetry at the end of his career is endlessly fascinating to me. His commitment to traditional, iambic forms at a time when his contemporaries (namely, Walt Whitman) were doing incredibly interesting things with blank verse almost feels like a practical joke or a cantankerous reaction to “the times.” But, and especially with his epic poem “Clarel,” he is doing some things that are worth paying attention to.

What’s more, in his Civil War poems, despite making his allegiances clear from the first page, he is constantly undercutting the more cliched expectations for war poems. Every line about heroism or bravery is quickly undercut by the cold realities of the brutal conflict.

Not for everyone, but I certainly enjoyed most of it. Will probably be picking up the full text of “Clarel” soon.