After reading the first forty one chapters of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, I decided to do a little more research on works that have been inspired by the story of Moby Dick. While I was looking, I stumbled across this poem by Dan Beachy-Quick simply titled, Moby Dick. After reading the poem many of the lines can be interpreted many ways in connection with the novel of Moby Dick.
The constant juxtaposition of light vs. darkness stuck out to me immediately. In the poem it refers to “dark light itself is blind” and in Moby Dick the idea of light vs. dark also occurs frequently in the connection to race. The shipmates on the Pequod are from many different backgrounds and get along fairly well, which is uncommon for some of the books we have read so far. When the narrator is introducing them to us in the story, the color of their skin and their nationality are always the first things mentioned. The constant reference to the whale as the “white whale” drew me to this connection of light vs. dark because the whale is the enemy in the novel.
The very last line in the poem was also really interesting to me because, like most stories about people setting off to sea, the person is going there to find themselves. The narrator asks us to call him Ishmael, this could mean that the narrator is not sure who he is or where he is going in life. This could also mean that the narrator is someone completely different than who he is actually telling us that he is. So I find it really intriguing that the last line asks us to tell him who he is, when in the first line of the text he tells us what he wants to be called.
Dan Beachy-Quick
Moby Dick
No reverie begs “light” in the blind eye.
Reverie says: dig this depth-of-blank
Deeper. Dig deeper
With the Whale below the white-capped waves—
A twitch of his tail, a twitch of his white tail
Birthed from ocean-bed the wave
That broke calm water into each cracked plank
Of the harpooner’s boat, made that man sway,
And cast him on the spear his arm meant to cast
At you. Beneath the sun’s evil weight
Men burn nightwards but never darken
Past night. There’s always the moon’s hook
On still water to deny them.
But Whale, you dive down
Until the ocean’s ground begs you solid, “Stop.”
Whale, you do not stop.
You beat your head against the jagged rocks.
Blind in depths so dark light itself is blind,
You knock your head against the rocks to see
And scratch the god-itch from your thoughts.
Flame is jealous of flame, once lit, it ever
Reaches higher. You wait, match-tip, White Whale.
I see how you wait in silence for silence
To say: write it in, tell me who I am now.
Here is the link to the website where I found the poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237564#poem
Dan Beachy-Quick also wrote a collection of essays inspired by Moby Dick, they are called A Whalers Dictionary if anyone wants to check that out!
