Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819. His parents were financially unstable, in over their heads having three kids. In 1830 the family moved to Albany in a futile attempt to join the fur trading business. By the time the family moved to the area, fur trading had become much less prosperous.
Once he set out on his own, Melville suffered many setbacks. He failed as a cabin boy, a school teacher, and at whaling. He exploded as an author, however, writing popular novels such as Typee and Oomo. His whaling experiences led him to write one of the most famous English novels ever, Moby Dick.
Although experiencing much success as a writer, Melville never made enough money to live off of. When his riches began to disappear, he turned to poetry. He failed miserably in his early years, eventually leaving the medium all together for many years. After retiring from a position of customs inspector that he held for 19 years, he returned to poetry, where he become somewhat successful for his work.

“There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.”

http://www.poetry-archive.com/m/the_martyr.html

This is a short excerpt from Melville’s The Martyr. He doesn’t follow a specific rhyme scheme throughout the poem, although he does rhyme on a somewhat consistent basis. He used a lot of repetition in this poem, as evidenced in this excerpt, and also uses contrast between a strong person and their weeping to stress the tragedy of the martyr’s death.


I picked the poem “The Apparition” at random, but enjoyed it nonetheless. It was somewhat short, but I thought it did a good job of entertaining. Melville is describing a sighting of a ghost, both what he physically sees as well as what he feels and the aura the apparition is giving off. Because of this glimpse of a ghost, he questions life and also life after death, and states a fear of success because of the failure or death that may follow.

http://www.poetry-archive.com/m/the_apparition.html



After reading through some of Melville’s work, I couldn’t really find any instance that flagged him as an American poet. Besides his vocabulary and possibly his choosing of topic, Melville didn’t really seem to separate himself from his international peers in terms of revealing exactly who is was.