Selected Poems of Herman Melville

While best known for such novels as his monumentalMoby-Dick Herman Melville was also an extraordinarily gifted poet. This is the most complete anthology of Melville’s poetry ever published in a single volume. It features a large selection fromBattle-Pieces and Aspects of the War along with Melville’s own notes and prose supplement; cantos from all four books ofClarel: A Poem andPilgrimage in the Holy Land; selections from Melville’s later books TimoleonJohn Marr and Other Sailors andWeeds and Wildings Chiefly with a Rose or Two; as well as a number of his powerful and lesserknown uncollected poems. This volume will usher in a new appreciation for Melville’s poetic gifts. Includes a new introduction to Melvilles life and later career as a poet during the Civil War and Gilded Age as well as notes and suggestions for further reading.For more than seventy years Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1700 titles Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. About the Author Herman Melville was born in August 1 1819 in New York City the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt young Herman tried work as a bank clerk as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool and as an elementary schoolteacher before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married had acquired a farm near Pittsfield Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne) and was hard at work on his masterpieceMoby-Dick. Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857 he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863 during the Civil War he moved back to New York City where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House and where in 1891 he died. A draft of a final prose work Billy Budd Sailor was left unfinished and uncollated packed tidily away by his widow where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.Robert Faggen teaches at Claremont McKenna College.