The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet

The Tenth Muse was enormously well-received when first published by Harvard University Press in 1975, and has been deemed a classic work. It has been out of print for several years now and this is the first paperback issue. In it Albert Gelpi asks hard questions about how poetry can take on for itself the problems of shaping American identities and argues that the conditions of American life and culture have pushed our major poets into a debate between intellect and passion. Gelpi provides thorough readings of major American poets from Bradstreet and Taylor up to the modernists, often using contemporary poets (Rich, Ginsberg, Duncan) as frames for those predecessors.

• When first published by Harvard in 1975 the book was enormously well received • Albert Gelpi is a well-known author - other books for CUP include A Coherent Splendour and Wallace Stevens

Preface; The Muse as Psyche, The Psyche as Muse; 1. The American as artist, the artist as American; 2. Edward Taylor: types and tropes; 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson: the eye of the seer; 4. Edgar Allan Poe: the hand of the maker; 5. Walt Whitman: the self as circumference; 6. Emily Dickinson: the self as center; Notes; Index.