Sailing Without Ahab: Ecopoetic Travels

Journey through uncharted literary waters and explore Melville's epic in bold new light Come sail with I. We're not taking the same trip, though you might recognize the familiar course. This time, the Pequod's American voyage steers its course across the 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 welcome 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.

Table of Contents:
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