"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

• 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.

"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

• 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.