Robert Frost and a Poetics of Appetite

by Katherine Kearns

Overview

Robert Frost and a Poetics of Appetite reads Frost's poetry within a theoretical perspective generated, but not limited by feminist analysis, and it evaluates Frost's persistent feminizing of poetic language in ways that he typically dramatizes as both erotic and humiliating. Kearns examines how Frost's dual and potentially conflicting obligations—to be manly and to be a poet—inform his entire poetics. The study unites psychobiographical and feminist approaches to create an adept and imaginative instrument of interpretation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521444859
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/25/1994
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #77
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction: 'The Serpent's Tail'; 1. Irony: 'Teiresia's Gaze'; 2. Irony II: 'This Is Not a Pipe'; 3. Women: 'Dryads, Witches, and Hill Wives'; 4. Eros: 'The Mischief Maker'; 5. Prosody: 'White Noise'; 6. Lyricism: 'At the Back of the North Wind'; Conclusion: 'Out Far and in Deep'; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...the most stimulating work on Frost since Richard Poirier's; it revises much...Kearns stays close to the poems; she takes Frost on his own terms and is among his most generous and generative readers...Kearns's revisionist readings of major poems and her mimesis of Frost's pushing toward extremes and stopping short of them are exemplary. This is first-rate work." Guy Rotella, New England Quarterly

"[Kearns's] study throws usefully adversarial light on what she half-unwillingly acknowledges to be the 'odd magic' of his poetry." Tony Sharpe, Journal of American Studies

From the Publisher