Robert Frost and a Poetics of Appetite

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 feminising of poetic language in ways that he typically dramatises 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. Rather than approaching Frost’s poetry with the methods and assumptions of deconstruction in mind, this book finds that Frost himself forces a deconstructive reading: his unstable ironies, his complexities and his manipulations of form are designed precisely to produce the conviction that any suggestion of significance is arbitrary and personal. The study unites biography, psychology and feminism in creating an adept and imaginative instrument of interpretation.

• Robert Frost’s poetry is widely studied on American literature courses • Presents a convincing feminist reading • Thorough reading of several important poems which will help it serve as a graduate text

Acknowledgments; 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.