Full Description
Journey through uncharted literary waters and explore Melville's epic in bold new light
Come sail with I.
We're not taking the same trip, though you might recognize the familiar course. This time, the Pequod's American voyage steers its course across the curvature of the Word Ocean without anyone at the helm. We are leaving one man and his madness on shore. Our ship overflows with glorious plurality—multiracial, visionary, queer, conflicted, polyphonic, playful, violent. But on this voyage something is different. Today we sail headless without any Captain. Instead of binding ourselves to the dismasted tyrant's rage, the ship's crew seeks only what we will find: currents teeming with life, a blue-watered alien globe, toothy cetacean smiles from vasty deeps. Treasures await those who sail without.
This cycle of one hundred thirty-eight poems—one for each chapter in Moby-Dick, plus the Etymology, Extracts, and Epilogue—launches into oceanic chaos without the stabilizing mad focus of the Nantucket captain. Guided by waywardness and curiosity, these poems seek an alien ecopoetics of marine depths, the refraction of light, the taste of salt on skin. Directionless, these poems reach out to touch oceanic expanse and depth. It's not an easy voyage, and not a certain one. It lures you forward. It has fixed its barbed hook in I.
Sailing without means relinquishing goals, sleeping at the masthead, forgetting obsessions. I welcome you to trace wayward ways through these poems. Read them any way you can—back to front, at random, sideways, following the obscure promptings of your heart. It's the turning that matters. It's a blue wonder world that beckons.
Contents
Foreword, by Suzanne Conklin Akbari xv
Etymology (Supplied by a late consumptive Professor) 1
Sailing Without 3
Headless Travels 5
Loomings 11
Out of Place 12
Fishing 13
Change 14
Vision 15
The Street 16
The Chapel 17
The Pulpit 18
Storm and Wreck 19
A Bosom Friend 20
Ideas 21
Mapping Oceans 22
Houses in Houses 23
Nantucket 24
Chowder 25
Who's on the Ship? 26
Intermittent Fasting 27
Sea Living 28
The Prophet 29
Tomorrow! 30
Going Aboard 31
Merry Christmas 32
The Lee Shore 33
The Encounter 34
Oil 35
Politics 36
Knights and Squires 37
[ . . . ] 38
A Scene on the Quarterdeck 39
No Pipe 40
Queen Mab 41
No Book 42
Lines of Succession 43
Dinner 44
The Mast-Head 45
A Spring Rose 46
Sunset 47
Dusk 48
First Night Watch 49
Forecastle—Midnight 50
Moby-Dick 51
Great White Evil God 52
Devils Who Never Sleep 53
The Chart 54
The Kind of Harpoon I. Throws 55
Not Seasick 56
Weavers 57
The First Lowering 58
Testament 59
Fedallah 60
The Spirit-Spout 61
The P. Does Not Meet the Albatross 62
How to Speak Whale 63
The Town Ho's Story 64
Monstrous Pictures of Whales 65
Cetacean Errors 66
Whale Rock 67
Blue Dreams 68
Squid 69
The Line 70
Stubb Kills a Whale 71
Authorities 72
Wooden Bodies 73
Eating Whale 74
Cannibal Old Me 75
Two Shark Stories 76
Whales and Other Humans 77
In the Whalelight 78
Whalefall 79
The Whale's Head 80
No Tail on the Jeroboam 81
The Monkey-rope 82
Brothers in Arms 83
The Sperm Whale's Head 84
The Right Whale's Head 85
I.'s Blue 86
Let the Oil Out! 87
Birthing Tash 88
Read It If You Can 89
A Hill of Snow 90
The P. Meets the V. 91
The Honor and Glory of Whaling 92
Jonah Historically Regarded 93
Just a Little Farther 94
How We Breathe 95
The Tail 96
The Grand Armada 97
A Love Story 98
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish 99
Heads or Tails 100
The P. Meets the Rose Bud 101
Ambergris 102
The Castaway 103
A Squeeze of the Hand 104
The Cassock 105
The State of the Ship 106
The Lamp 107
The Search 109
No Doubloon 110
The P. Meets the Samuel Enderby of London 112
The Next Voyage 112
Inside the Skeleton 113
Measurements of the Whale's Skeleton 114
The Fossil Whale 115
Save the Whales! 116
Glass Foot 117
The Carpenter 118
What the Carpenter Says 119
Starbuck in the Cabin 120
Q. in His Coffin 121
The Pacific 122
The Blacksmith 123
Making a Harpoon 124
Calenture 125
The P. Meets the Bachelor 126
The Dying Whale 127
When It's Almost Possible to See 128
The Quadrant 129
Swimmer in Storm 130
The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch 131
Midnight—the Forecastle Bulwarks 132
Midnight, Aloft—Thunder and Lightning 133
Errors in a Book 134
At Sea 135
The Log and Line 136
The Life-Buoy 137
Coffins 138
The P. Meets the Rachel 139
Pip in the Cabin 140
No Hat 141
The P. Meets the Delight 142
The Symphony 143
The Chase—First Day 144
The Chase—Second Day 145
The Chase—Third Day 149
Epilogue 151
A Critical Postscript: Cyborgs, Whalemen, and Other Voyagers in Moby-Dick 153
Acknowledgments 173
