So, I’ve ordered Melville’s complete poems. They should be waiting for me when I get back. Thanks for the spur, Melville fans (of whom I count myself one). I remembered reading somewhere that Melville’s last years, during which he wrote much of his poetry, were rather unhappy. Got this from Wiki, quoting Laurie Robertson-Lorent's bio:
An unsympathetic person might characterize Melville as a failed writer who held a low-level government job, drank too much, heckled his wife unmercifully about the housework, beat her occasionally, and drove the children to distraction with his unpredictable behavior. A sympathetic observer might characterize him as an underappreciated genius, a visionary, an iconoclastic thinker, a sensitive, orphaned American idealist, and a victim of a crude, materialistic society that ate artists and visionaries alive and spat out their bones. He was both, and more.
Anyway, I look forward to plunging into the poems. I needed a good project.
And Bill – I also love GE. I re-read Middlemarch a year or two ago, and damn!, it’s good.
Back to ‘hidden gems”…
Last edited by Michael F; 04-04-2017 at 07:45 PM.
Reason: which, whom, whatever
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