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.