Albert Gelpi

Adrienne Rich

Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi

Presents an annotated selection of poems and prose writings by twentieth-century American author Adrienne Rich, and includes thirteen reviews and interpretations of her work.

Poems, Prose, Reviews, and Criticism

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

Robert J. Bertholf

Robert Edward Duncan

This volume presents the complete correspondence between two of the most important and influential American poets of the postwar period. The almost 500 letters range widely over the poetry scene and the issues that made the period so lively and productive. But what gives the exchange its special personal and literary resonance is the sense of spiritual affinity and shared conviction about the power of the visionary imagination. Duncan and Levertov explore these matters in rich detail until, under the stress of dealing with the Vietnam War in poetry, they discover deep-seated differences in the religious and ethical convictions underlying their politics and poetic stance. The issues that drew them together and those that drove them apart create a powerful personal drama with far-reaching historical and cultural significance. The editors have provided a critical Introduction, full notes, a chronology, and a glossary of names.

The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov

Albert Gelpi's American Poetry after Modernism is a study of sixteen major American poets of the postwar period, from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich. Gelpi argues that a distinctly American poetic tradition was solidified in the later half of the twentieth century, thus severing it from British conventions. In Gelpi's view, what distinguishes the American poetic tradition from the British is that at the heart of the American endeavor is a primary questioning of function and medium. The chief paradox in American poetry is the lack of a tradition that requires answering and redefining - redefining what it means to be a poet and, likewise, how the words of a poem create meaning, offer insight into reality, and answer the ultimate questions of living. Through chapters devoted to specific poets, Gelpi explores this paradox by providing an original and insightful reading of late-twentieth-century American poetry.

The Power of the Word

American Poetry after Modernism

Albert Gelpi's American Poetry after Modernism is a study of sixteen major American poets of the postwar period, from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich. Gelpi argues that a distinctly American poetic tradition was solidified in the later half the twentieth century, thus severing it from British conventions.

In this volume, seven renowned critics present different views of Wallace Stevens' place in the evolution of Modernist poetry. The essays offer a fresh scrutiny of the poet's work and influence, re-examining the critical consensus that has developed since Stevens first gained the attention of critics in the fifties. The collection traces both the development of Modernist poetics and Stevens' place in it, from the poet's relation to such contemporaries as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore to his influence on current writers such as John Ashbery and Robert Duncan. The contributions examine the cultural influences, or 'context', from which Stevens emerges: the Symbolist and Imagist traditions, the social and political context of the war years, and contemporary movements in the visual arts. Finally, two essays investigate the influence of Stevens on later poets.

The Poetics of Modernism

Wallace Stevens

The Tenth Muse considers the debate between intellect and passion apparent in the work of poets from Bradstreet to Rich.

The Psyche of the American Poet

The Tenth Muse

Sacvan Bercovitch

Myra Jehlen

For more than a decade, Americanists have been concerned with the problem of ideology, and have undertaken a broad reassessment of American literature and culture. This volume brings together some of the best work in this area.

Ideology and Classic American Literature

Bernard O'Donoghue

C. Day-Lewis was a major figure in British poetry and culture from the 1930s until his death in 1972. The Golden Bridle: Selected Prose takes its title from the myth of Bellerophon and the golden bridle of Pegasus, which Day-Lewis invoked on several occasions as a metaphor for the creative process. Day-Lewis as poet is, then, the organizing idea of this anthology, and the selections indicate the scope and range of his vital engagement with English life and letters. Organised into four parts, the volume illustrates Day-Lewis's reflections on the role and function of poetry in society and culture; the creative process and the workings of the imagination as well as the nature of poetic truth and its relation to science; poets who were of particular importance to Day-Lewis; and the poetic process in relation to the composition of several of his own poems. The notes indicate the particular source, circumstances, and central issues of each piece, to provide a brief intellectual biography and critical account of this eminent poet's development and standing.

Selected Prose

C. Day-Lewis: The Golden Bridle

Robinson Jeffers

An intense collection of poems from the great Western poet surveys the writer's work and features revealing statements about his poetics and philosophy. Simultaneous. (Poetry)

An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers

The Wild God of the World

The Oxford poets of the 1930s--W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, and Louis MacNeice--represented the first concerted British challenge to the domination of twentieth-century poetry by the innovations of American modernists such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Known for their radical politics and aesthetic conservatism, the "Auden Generation" has come to loom large in our map of twentieth century literary history. Yet Auden's voluble domination of the group in its brief period of association, and Auden's sway with critics ever since, has made it difficult to hear the others on their own terms and in their own distinct voices. Here, rendered in eloquent prose by one of our most distinguished critics of modern poetry, is the first full-length study of the poetry of C. Day Lewis, a book that introduces the reader to a profoundly revealing and beautifully wrought record of his poetry against the cultural and literary ferment of this century. Albert Gelpi explores in three expansive sections the major periods of the poet's development, beginning with the emergence of Day Lewis in the thirties as the most radical of the Oxford poets. An artist who sought through poetry a way of "living in time" without traditional religious assurances, Day Lewis went further than his friends in seeking to forge a revolutionary poetry out of his commitment to Marxism. When Stalinism led to his resignation from the Communist Party, Day Lewis in the forties went on to shape a rich, fiercely perceptive poetry out of the convergence of the wartime crisis with the explosive events of his own inner life, intensified by the erotics of a decade-long affair. Returning to his Irish roots and meditating on the persistent tension between agnosticism and faith in the work of his third and final period, Day Lewis wrote some of the most moving poems in the language about mortality and dying, the limits and possibilities of human striving. Through the traumatic changes of his life C. Day Lewis came increasingly to depend on the intricacies of poetry itself as a way of living in time. His abiding belief in the psychological and moral functions of poetry impelled him in his critical writings and in his own poetic practice to delineate a modern poetics that presents an effective alternative to the elitist experimentation associated with Modernism. This vital revisionist reading of Day Lewis demonstrates that much of his best work was written after the thirties and establishes him as one of the most significant and accomplished British poets of the modern period.

The Poetry of C. Day Lewis

Living in Time

Ross Posnock

Edwin S. Redkey

Compiles 176 letters written by black Union soldiers during the Civil War addressed to black and abolitionist newspapers, correspondence that describes the hardships and excitement of a soldier's life and expresses the hopes and fears of the writers. Simultaneous.

Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army 1861-1865

A Grand Army of Black Men

This Norton Critical Edition includes:* Generous selections of poetry and prose from the entire oeuvre of one of America's most influential poets.* An introduction and explanatory annotations by Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, Albert Gelpi, and Brett Millier.* Fifteen reviews and critical commentaries, nine of them new to the Second Edition, carefully chosen as a guide to Adrienne Rich's poetics--and to her poetics as related to politics--ranging from W. H. Auden's 1951 response to her first book to critics' reviews of the magisterial Collected Poems in 2016.* A Chronology, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index.About the SeriesRead by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Poetry and Prose

A distinguished group of critics examine the close association between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, two poets central to the American postwar period, and the issues of form and meaning that drew them together and then split them apart, especially the question of the relation between poetry and politics, the private and public responsibilities of the poet.

Albert Gelpi

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