The Once and Future Muse
The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat
Published on 5. June 2018
296 pages
978-0-8229-8348-4 (ISBN)
Description
Honorable Mention, 2021 SSAWW Book Award
The Once and Future Muse presents the first major study of the life and work of Dominican-born bilingual American poet and translator Rhina P. Espaillat (b. 1932). Beginning with her literary celebrity as the youngest poet ever inducted into the Poetry Society of America, it traces her relative obscurity after 1952 when she married and took on family and employment responsibilities, to her triumphant return to the poetry spotlight decades later when she reclaimed her former prestige with a series of award-winning poetry collections.
The authors define Espaillat's place in American letters with attention to her formalist aesthetics, Hispanic Caribbean immigrant background, poetic community building, bilingual ethos, and domestically minded woman-of-color feminism. Addressing the temporality of her oeuvre-her publishing before and after the splitting of American literature into distinct ethnic segments-this work also highlights the demands that the social transformations of the 1960s placed on literary artists, critics, and readers alike.
The Once and Future Muse presents the first major study of the life and work of Dominican-born bilingual American poet and translator Rhina P. Espaillat (b. 1932). Beginning with her literary celebrity as the youngest poet ever inducted into the Poetry Society of America, it traces her relative obscurity after 1952 when she married and took on family and employment responsibilities, to her triumphant return to the poetry spotlight decades later when she reclaimed her former prestige with a series of award-winning poetry collections.
The authors define Espaillat's place in American letters with attention to her formalist aesthetics, Hispanic Caribbean immigrant background, poetic community building, bilingual ethos, and domestically minded woman-of-color feminism. Addressing the temporality of her oeuvre-her publishing before and after the splitting of American literature into distinct ethnic segments-this work also highlights the demands that the social transformations of the 1960s placed on literary artists, critics, and readers alike.
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Other editions
Additional editions
Nancy Kang | Silvio Torres-Saillant
Once and Future Muse, The
The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat
Book
05/2018
University of Pittsburgh Press
€48.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Persons
Nancy Kang (Author)
Nancy Kang is assistant professor of multicultural and diaspora literatures at the University of Baltimore. She is coeditor of The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott.
Silvio Torres-Saillant (Author)
Silvio Torres-Saillant is professor of English and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. He is the author of Caribbean Poetics; Introduction to Dominican Blackness; and An Intellectual History of the Caribbean, among other works.
Nancy Kang is assistant professor of multicultural and diaspora literatures at the University of Baltimore. She is coeditor of The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott.
Silvio Torres-Saillant (Author)
Silvio Torres-Saillant is professor of English and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. He is the author of Caribbean Poetics; Introduction to Dominican Blackness; and An Intellectual History of the Caribbean, among other works.
Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- One: A Feeling, A Beat, and An Image
- Two: Genealogies of Sensibility
- Three: Locations of Identity: Craft, Ethnicity, and Americanness
- Four: Multicultural Imperatives, Difference, and American Promise
- Five: Quiet Revolution: Domesticity and Creation Stories
- Six: The Spirit in the Wound: Decaying Bodies and Poetic Thanatopsis
- Seven: Toward a Critical Consensus
- Eight: Ever-Widening Circles: A Poetics of Inclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
