After reading Professor Burton's post on digitally mediating literary texts, I immediately wanted to try making poetry out of the more poetic passages in Moby Dick. I decided to take Ahab's soliloquy from chapter 37 and see what I could do with it.
It was surprisingly easy to see where the line breaks should go, though I'm no poet myself. I felt like the stanzas fell together into themes. After I made the poem, I printed it out and made notes on it like I would with any other poem.
I've linked here to the original version I made and my annotated version.
Some of the most interesting things I noticed were the use of color imagery and Christ/Satan imagery. I looked up the iron crown of Lombardy, which I had just skipped over when actually reading the novel. In some ways, I think poetry just helps us to slow down when reading texts and look for meaning in every word.
But seriously, the last few stanzas? They look like perfect poetry to me.
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