American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms.

New Haven, CT Yale University Press , 1987. Hardcover First Edition [1987]; First Printing indicated by a complete numerical sequence. First Edition [1987]; First Printing indicated by a complete numerical sequence. Near Fine in Very Good DJ. Book shows minimal rubbing to the extremities; single, very faint smudge at the upper fore-edge; else flawless; the binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text. Free of ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, or labels. A handsome, nearly-new copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing a hint of wear and a single cosmetic flaw. Bright and clean. Corners sharp. Very close to 'As New'. The DJ shows a couple of small chips and tiny tears at the top edge; overall light wear to the extremities; unclipped; mylar-protected. Attractive and intact, but shows light wear. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (9.55 x 6.35 x 1 inchs). 248 pages. Language: English. Weight: 22 ounces. Hardback with DJ. Blasing endeavors to clear American poetry of its "centering figure," Ralph Waldo Emerson, instead identifying a quartet: Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson as that tradition's informing figures. She then associates each with a "master trope: "metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, respectively, that serves as a "strategy" for organizing our approach to the poems they offer. The eight 20th-century poets investigated here, ranging from Eliot to Ashbery, are placed in one or another of these overarching tropes.