Navigate the Depths of a Timeless Classic, Reimagined.
Come sail with I.
We're not taking the same trip, though you might recognize the familiarcourse. This time, the Pequod's American voyage steers its course acrossthe 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. welcomes 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.
By:
Steve Mentz
Foreword by:
Suzanne Conklin Akbari
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
Weight: 376g
ISBN: 9781531506315
ISBN 10: 1531506313
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 02 April 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
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
Steve Mentz (Author) Steve Mentz is Professor of English at St. John’s University and author of An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (2023), Ocean (2020) and a poetry chapbook, “Swim Poems” (2022). He also writes and curates The Bookfish Blog at www.stevementz.com. Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Foreword By) Suzanne Conklin Akbari is professor of Medieval Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and co-host of the literature podcast The Spouter-Inn.
Reviews for Sailing without Ahab: Ecopoetic Travels
An innovative and poetic imagining of the Pequod's journey without Ahab as well as its representations of the wild oceanic currents, spaces and depths, Steve Mentz contributes to our understanding of ecopoetry, the blue humanities, and even Melville studies in an original and stimulating manner.---Craig Santos Perez, author of Navigating Chamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization
