Melville is primarily known as a novelist, though critics regard him as one of the most important American poets of the nineteenth century, in the tier just beneath Whitman and Dickinson. Professor Helen Vendler of Harvard, contributing to her sixth Arion book, has chosen a generous selection of the poems and written an introductory essay that discusses Melville's accomplishment as a poet and how the Civil War and his travels in Europe and the Holy Land provided themes for his writings. This volume relates to our folio edition of Moby-Dick, published in 1979, using the same hand-made paper, in an octavo format; the same typeface, in a smaller point size; the same leather for the binding, in an unusual design; and the same artist, Barry Moser, who engraved a portrait of the older Melville.