Abstract

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.