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Public privacy: Melville's Coterie authorship in John Marr and other sailors.(Herman Melville's John Marr and Other Sailors poetry collection)

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From: Leviathan
Date: 20071001
Author:Giordano, Matthew

Near the end of Billy Bud& Sailor, the narrator describes the concluding poem "Billy in the Darbies" as a "rude utterance from another foretopman, one of [Billy's] own watch, gifted, as some sailors are, with an artless poetic temperament." (1) He continues, "The tarry hand made some lines which, after circulating among the shipboard crews for a while, finally got rudely printed at Portsmouth as a ballad" (Billy Budd 131). Melville's account of the foretopman can be read as an ironic self-commentary, for as he was composing Billy Budd, he was also putting together the collection ...

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