Reviews for The Poetical Works Of Oliver Wendell Holmes

The average rating for The Poetical Works Of Oliver Wendell Holmes based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-27 00:00:00 John Rich Herman Melville's poetry is an enigma. The man wrote poetry when he wrote prose. Passages from Moby Dick can be easily laid out in iambic pentameter, with the rich rhythms and imagery you'd expect from a great poet. Yet his poetry proves something else - a bit stiff, slavish to the meter, with cloying rhymes. His mistake, it seems to me, is trying to take his epic, sprawling style and fit it in a tight, lyric format. The short lined lyric doesn't do him justice, and I don't think he wrote anything in blank verse - which you would think would be is forte. That said, he wrote some fine poems - the John Marr collection being his best in my opinion. This edition, collected and introduced by Robert Penn Warren, offers an excellent sample of Melville's poetry, covering poems from his entire life. Warren's introduction offers one of the best, most comprehensive overviews of Melville's poetry that you'll find outside some obscure literary magazine. If you're interested in Melville and/or his poetry, this is a great starting point. Battle-Pieces *** -- I found this to be a rather strange work. It doesn't have the vitality or sweep of Whitman's Drum Taps. Melville struggles to understand the Civil War and its carnage, but his language and ideas seem trapped in metric forms and rhymes. (1/12) Clarel ** - This is a difficult, rambling poem to read and understand. The form cramps Melville's sprawling style, and the rigid meter is difficult, requiring someone of more skill than Melville (or most writers) possess. (1/12) John Marr and Other Sailors **** - This brief collection is outstanding. Here, Melville adopts a longer line - rhyming but not metrically rigid - that gives him the freedom and space he needs to express himself. The "Sailor Poems" that start the collection are particularly good, though they all have the same story/theme: An old man looking back on his sailing life. Billy Budd probably started as part of this collection, but took on a life of its own and Melville began working on it separately. If anyone is interested in Melville poetry, I'd suggest starting here. (1/12)

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-29 00:00:00 Corey Slyford Picked up a 1944 New Directions copy on a whim at a used bookstore. To glance at Melville's early poems but also b/c I wanted an early-days New Directions publication. They were founded in 1934. These poems are, uh, putrid! Melville scholars and 19th C Americanists will find something to do with them but if yr interested in poetry steer clear. Not one of ND's bravery reprints. One point of curiosity was "The Berg," an entry into the genre of works about how poets find grotesque and powerful polar nature. There's a riff about the berg's huge death that might be of interest alongside Cowper's iceberg poem and the long history of what gazing at icebergs has meant and means now that the world is on fire//in the thick of the capitaloscene: "Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast, / With mortal damps self-overcast; / Exhaling still thy dankish breath-- / Adrift dissolving, bound for death" (17).