Of Whales: In Print, in Paint, in Sea, in Stars, in Coin, in House, in Margins

OF WHALES is Anthony Caleshu's second book of poems. Melville and Moby-Dick provide a starting point for Caleshu, who uses the author and his most famous book to push the boundaries of the imagination and language. Like Melville himself, Caleshu is a 'skald, who knows how to appropriate the work of others. Highborn stealth' (as Charles Olson wrote of Melville). Taking episodes from Melville's life and work, Caleshu rewrites them to personal and dramatic effect in poems which move between the sea and family home. Some of the most ambitious poems take as their spring board Melville's own source books for MOBY-DICK; works like Owen Chase's 'Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex' and JN Reynolds' 'Mocha Dick: or the White Whale of the Pacific' are treated to new 'appropriation'. Melville's MOBY-DICK has had its share of artist's using it as a source for their own work, and here Caleshu extends the tradition as he manages to not only rewrite Moby-Dick (word for word, as we find out in one poem) but to venture in the realm of familial relations. Central to the book are poems where a father speaks of Whales (in print; in paint; in tooth, in stone, in coin; in house, in surf, in song, in stars) to his colicky newborn son in the darkest hours of the night. A lucid book which dives deep and away from its sources.