Whitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry: Against Vocation

Whitman, Melville, Crane, and the Labors of American Poetry is about the type of work that poets perform and why it matters. The poet has long stood in as a prime example of ‘vocation’ or the realization of an individual calling. Hence, we tend to think of poets as geniuses who must struggle against the demands of performing quotidian work (i.e., day jobs) in order to achieve their ultimate inborn calling to write poetry. This book delves into previously overlooked archives to consider how the poetry of Walt Whitman the real estate dealer, Herman Melville the customs inspector, and Hart Crane the copywriter upsets this assumed divide between inspired poetic production and other apparently lesser and contingent forms of labor. In doing so, it presents a challenge to common-sense ideas about vocation, meritocracy, and how different forms of work are socially valued in our modern market-based, work-oriented society.