"The Property of My Own Book": Emerson's Poems (1847) and the Literary Marketplace

and talks to his Angels." Traditionally Emerson has appeared that way to many; whether his writing or his politics is at issue, he is often portrayed (especially by detractors) as willfully naive, a spirit who wandered into the flesh as if by chance. Such a view is still current. Frank Lentricchia, for example, sees Emerson as exclusively concerned for the idealized "motions" of the "active soul," and so he "never works in, on, or through the mediations of actual social arrangements."' As the recent and salutary "de-Transcendentalizing" trend in Emerson studies has helped to show, however, Emerson was neither a displaced angel nor a refugee from history. Indeed his literary theory and practice as well as his cultural politics reflect his engagement, even though most readers have assumed--