Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.” Much of the verse is stylistically conventional (more so than modern readers perhaps expect from the author of Moby-Dick), but the shifting subjectivities and unresolved traumas that unfold in the collection merit repeated contemplation. Melville’s Battle-Pieces do not offer a neatly versified narrative of the Civil War but rather kaleidoscopic glimpses of shifting emotions and ambivalent reflections of post-war America.
Read by Multiple Readers From Clark University
Running Time:02:24:22 in 2 Audio CDs
Section --- Chapter --- Runtime
1 01 - The Portent (1859) - 00:58
2 02 - Misgivings - 01:14
3 03 - The Conflict of Convictions - 04:40
4 04 - Apathy and Enthusiasm - 02:27
5 05 - The March into Virginia - 01:59
6 06 - Lyon - 02:56
7 07 - Ball's Bluff - 01:21
8 08 - Dupont's Round Fight - 00:53
9 09 - The Stone Fleet - 02:16
10 10 - Donelson - 19:01
11 11 - The Cumberland - 02:20
12 12 - In the Turret - 02:34
13 13 - The Temeraire - 02:45
14 14 - The Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight - 02:04
15 15 - Shiloh - 01:32
16 16 - The Battle for the Mississippi - 02:41
17 17 - Malvern Hill - 01:53
18 18 - The Victor of Antietam - 02:55
19 19 - Battle of Stone River - 02:43
20 20 - Running the Batteries - 04:20
21 21 - Stonewall Jackson - 01:11
22 22 - Stonewall Jackson (ascribed to a Virginian) - 02:51
23 23 - Gettysburg - 01:54
24 24 - The House-top - 02:42
25 25 - Look-out Mountain - 01:15
26 26 - Chattanooga - 03:40
27 27 - The Armies of the Wilderness - 09:33
28 28 - On the Photograph of a Corps Commander - 01:25
29 29 - The Swamp Angel - 02:36
30 30 - The Battle for the Bay - 06:58
31 31 - Sheridan at Cedar Creek - 02:17
32 32 - In the Prison Pen - 01:23
33 33 - The College Colonel - 01:44
34 34 - The Eagle of the Blue - 01:24
35 35 - A Dirge for McPherson - 01:35
36 36 - At the Cannon's Mouth - 02:22
37 37 - The March to the Sea - 03:48
38 38 - The Frenzy in the Wake - 01:41
39 39 - The Fall of Richmond - 01:20
40 40 - The Surrender at Appomattox - 01:11
41 41 - A Canticle - 02:59
42 42 - The Martyr - 01:35
43 43 - 'The Coming Storm' - 01:01
44 44 - Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh - 02:28
45 45 - The Muster - 01:32
46 46 - Aurora Borealis - 01:22
47 47 - The released Rebel Prisoner - 02:44
48 48 - A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia - 01:12
49 49 - 'Formerly a Slave' - 01:12
50 50 - The Apparition - 01:16
51 51 - Magnanimity Baffled - 01:11
52 52 - On the Slain Collegians - 02:44
53 53 - America - 02:42
54 54 - An Epitaph - 00:58
55 55 - The Mound by the Lake - 01:04
56 56 - Commemorative of a Naval Victory - 01:57