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| Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash |
Herman Melville not only wrote novels, but spent the last decades of his life, in particular, writing poetry.
His first book of poems, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) followed the timeline of the Civil War. According to the Poetry Foundation ‘the poems deflate core myths of American exceptionalism.’
His poetry reflected his search for meaning, truth and peace.
Dirge
We drop our dead in the sea,
The bottomless, bottomless sea;
Each bubble a hollow sigh,
As it sinks forever and aye.
We drop our dead in the sea, –
The dead reek not of aught;
We drop our dead in the sea, –
The sea ne’er gives it a thought.
Sink, sink, oh corpse, still sink,
Far down in the bottomless sea,
Where the unknown forms do prowl,
Down, down in the bottomless sea.
‘Tis night above, and night all round,
And night will it be with thee;
As thou sinkest, and sinkest for aye,
Deeper down in the bottomless sea.
#MobyDickReadalong
Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I’m enjoying sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her at the moment.
Interesting notes about his poetry. I hadn't realized he wrote so much of it. That \”Dirge\” is pretty depressing. \”Moby-Dick\” is a favorite of mine ever since I read it 2 years ago. I am enjoying following your Tweeting and blogging about the readathon!
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I feel like I've become a little obsessed with Melville atm! Have been digging into his backstory online and think that I will need to hunt down a good bio or two to find out more. His life seems so open to interpretation and re-interpretation – a process I find endlessly fascinating – how people and historic events get re-examined, reclaimed and reinterpreted by different times and different groups.
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Very dark, but I love the sound of this.
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Dark.
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Yes I'm beginning to discover that Melville was a very complex character. I've been researching online his backstory after becoming a little confused by some mixed messages I felt that I was getting about him as I was reading MD.I think that mixed messages could have been his motto!!
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There's something about the bottomless sea refrain that I find quite appealing despite its dark message.
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