While I will be addressing one of Melville’s poems in a big way next week, that still leaves a lot undiscussed, not least of which is Battle-Pieces, and Aspects of the War. Amateur Reader wrote about it earlier in the week (along with other Melville poetry). I still have not finished the collection, and may not, so you should head over there and find out about it instead.
What I have read has been a mixed bag. Some poems I am simply bored by. Others are strange, but sometimes in a good, arresting way. Like “Donelson,” which is weirdly avant-garde and includes news bulletins about the progress of the battle it describes.
But “Misgivings,” the first poem in the collection, is more along the lines of what seems to appeal to me in poetry. The first half of the poem:
When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country’s ills—
The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.
I’m completely in love with the imagery of the first four lines. The spire crashing down like a mast in a storm, but in town, not at sea, where such storms are supposed to happen. And this is happening right now! And look at the awful thoughts it’s causing.
My problem is, I have no idea if this is any good. ABABACC—I don’t know what that is, if anything. I don’t know that the last line might not be a bit too much. I don’t think I particularly like “the waste of Time,” or know quite what it really means in context. But I guess this is what I have to do with poetry for a while, feel it out a bit.
Just one editor, just one way of looking at the issue. John Hollander, for his Melville seletion in the Library of America American Poetry: The Ninteenth Century, Vol. 2, picks:
14 poems (14 pages) from Battle Pieces (including “Misgivings”)
30 pages of excerpts from Clarel
8 poems (13 pages) from John Marr
11 poems (16 pages) from Timoleon etc.
and a few other poems from here and there.
John Marr and Timoleon are both very short, so this is, proportionally, a high emphasis on the later poetry. Hollander seems to think Melville gets better over time. Me, too!
“Donelson” is a good example ofa Battle Pieces poem that might not make much sense outside of the collection. Even with “Misgivings,” the context sure pins down the meaning.