The Tenth Muse
The Psyche of the American Poet

In The Tenth Muse, Albert Gelpi asks the 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. Originally published in 1975 in hardcover only by Harvard University Press

Reviews & endorsements

"Mr. Gelpi, with brief glances at other poets in addition to the major five under especial scrutiny, illustrates his discussions with analyses of individual poems. His interpretations are often complex and brilliant and it is impossible to do justice to them in a short review. I found his discussion (and his distinction between) types and tropes as they appear in Taylor and in the later nineteenth-century poets and his interpretation of Dickinson's circumference poems as well as her use of sun, moon, and other basic symbols as they relate to the Demeter-Persephone-Kore archetype (as explicated by Jung, Neumann, and Kerenyi) particularly helpful." Donald E. Stanford, American Literature

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Product details

• Date Published: September 1991
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521424011
• length: 358 pages

• dimensions: 234 x 156 x 24 mm
• weight: 0.5kg
• contains: 14 b/w illus. 4 maps
• availability: Available