A Whaler's Dictionary

by Dan Beachy-Quick

Overview

From one of the nation’s most dynamic and celebrated young poets, an extended dialogue with the greatest masterpiece of American literature, Moby-Dick.

Taking its inspiration—and, for that matter, its form—from Ishmael’s abandoned “Cetological Dictionary” in Moby-Dick, this extraordinary, highly original work brings meditations on myth, representation, language, nature, consciousness, and notions of spiritual quest into constantly new relations. From “Accuracy” to “Wound,” from “Adam” to “Void,” and from “Babel” to “Silence,” the cross-referential, highly associative entries make up an utterly singular work of art.

For fans of Beachy-Quick’s acclaimed collections of poems, for the legions of Melville fanatics among us, and indeed for anyone who regards reading as an unconditional, encompassing obsession, A Whaler’s Dictionary is absolutely essential.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571313096
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	11/01/2008
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

Editorial Reviews

“Essayistic, inventive, and frequently brilliant.”
—Poetry Foundation

“This is a rich, profound, fascinating book, the kind that widens the margins of everything we read, making room for new observations, more creative relationships all around: writer/reader, person/book, literature/life.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Wounded by a book, wounded by the force of idolatrous speech in Moby-Dick, Dan Beachy-Quick has mounted a kind of folly, a nautilus, enclosing the furtive wall of his own lyric sensibility. A Whaler's Dictionary reminds us why poets must sometimes measure their gifts against the calculus of prose, and why criticism by poets, unlike academic arguments, sometimes produces a flame which stands the test of time.”
—Daniel Tiffany, author of Toy Medium and Puppet Wardrobe

“This is a major work on the charged relationship that can come into being between text and reader, written by one of America’s most significant young poets.”
—Lyn Hejinian, author of Saga/Circus and The Fatalist

“A Whaler’s Dictionary manages to function as an oddly ideal work of criticism, breathing new life into Moby-Dick and showing how the novel subsists as an intricately living thing.”
—Virginia Quarterly Review

From the Publisher

A supple and well-read poet with a fine ear, Beachy-Quick has long studied-some might even say he has been obsessed with-Moby-Dick; his second (of three) books of verse, Spell(2004), wove references and passages from Melville's novel into poems. This much longer book of short prose essays responds in more straightforward ways: each of its two-to-three-page pieces takes up a topic from the lives and thoughts of Ahab, Ishmael and their crew (such as "Vengeance," "Flame" and "Fate") and reflects on it. Often the whale, and the book, represent the endlessness of all quests, our enduring hunger for the right, last word. Jewish philosophy and wisdom literature (Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas), other famous modern thinkers (Wittgenstein, Derrida) and Shakespeare's King Lear also guide Beachy-Quick's thoughts, while the rhythms of not only Melville but Emerson and Thoreau guide his resonant prose. The poet Charles Olson launched his own career with a book about Melville, and Beachy-Quick may have Olson in mind; he has certainly paid rapt attention to a world masterpiece. Yet that attention too often produces predictable arguments, ideas that many other readers of Melville will easily recognize, though Beachy-Quick's lyrical evocation may also give them new life: "The whale is the wall behind which the universe mockingly lingers whole." (Oct.)

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