An Appetite For Poetry

Frank Kermode is one of the pre-eminent practitioners of the art of criticism in the English speaking world. It has been his distinction to make a virtue – as all the best critics have done – of the necessarily occasional nature of his profession. That virtue is evident on every page of this collection of essays. In one group of essays he asks the reader to share his pleasure in a number of major writers – Milton, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens. In another, he discusses ideas about problems in biblical criticism and their implications for the study of narrative in particular and the interpretation of secular literary texts in general. In them he gives clear accounts of questions relating to interpretation and the debate about canons. A key essay looks at the career of William Empson, a career lived between literature and criticism, between the pleasure of the text and the delight in conceptual issues which is characteristic of so much of the contemporary taste for theory. It is Empson's career, perhaps, which is the foundation for the polemical prologue to the book, where Kermode challenges those who doubt the possibility (and the necessity) of the cross-over between literature and criticism, and who argue that criticism is mere appreciation, mere connoisseurship, that theory has displaced criticism and has left literature in the dust, that theory is the avant-garde of critical thought. This piece defines the author's position in the debate about literature and value.

Appetite is a book that explores our American Mythologies, particularly masculinity and film. Smith investigates our fascinations with the body, gender, and entertainment in poems that are critically observant, darkly funny, darkly angry, and, sometimes, heartbreaking. Whether he is cataloging shirtless men in films and bad television, lyricizing the anxieties of childhood, or redrawing the lines of cultural membership, Appetite attacks its subjects with wit, candor, and compassionate intensity. These poems announce their presence with a style that is as beautifully wrought as it is provocative. In the America of Appetite, the usual hierarchies are obliterated: the disposable is as valuable as the traditional, pop culture is on the same level as the sacred, and the pleasurable simultaneity of past and present are found in high art and the tabloid. Smith’s work engages our contemporary moment and how we want to think of ourselves, while nodding to rich poetic, cultural, and personal histories.

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Adonis Garage introduces a talent exquisitely keyed to the register of New York City?s pulse and to the heartbeat of the day. Raw and graphic, with a brash and beautiful voice, Rynn Williams?s poetry immerses us in disillusionment and desire and bears witness to the meaning of survival. ø Judith Ortiz Cofer called Adonis Garage ?a book of life written by someone who has lived honestly and passionately, and whose art has been mastered in order to bear witness and find meaning in each day.? Rynn Williams's poems are ?brutally frank, brutally beautiful, and sexy,? said writer and critic Jonathan Holden.

A New York Times bestseller? Oh, you know the dogs weren't going to let the cats get away with that! This canine companion to I Could Pee on This, the beloved volume of poems by cats, I Could Chew on This will have dog lovers laughing out loud. Doggie laureates not only chew on quite a lot of things, they also reveal their creativity, their hidden motives, and their eternal (and sometimes misguided) effervescence through such musings as "I Dropped a Ball," "I Lose My Mind When You Leave the House," and "Can You Smell That?" Accompanied throughout by portraits of the canine poets in all their magnificence, I Could Chew on This is a work of unbridled enthusiasm, insatiable appetite, and, yes, creative genius. Plus, this is a fixed-format version of the book, which looks nearly identical to the print version.

These poems reflect an astute awareness of associations across time. A beetle crossing a tennis court brings to mind an infant crawling across the floor one who's now asking for the keys to the family car. A jar of golden honey draws readers into the murmur of bees and the scent of basswood flowers. In Earth's Appetite, Hasse offers a lyrical paean to re-roofing a house and a humorous description of how a dog and its unemployed owner spend a day. Her extended ode to feet, "twin girls dressed alike," possesses a Neruda-like simplicity and charm. The book shows Hasse's longstanding mastery of striking imagery. "Rung by rung down the ladder of my backbone," she writes, and "earth like a love tilts toward and away." The book as a whole reminds us of the quirky ways that lives unfold, strengthening or breaking connections, offering unexpected turns and recurrent, familiar themes.

This book reads Frost's poetry within a theoretical perspective generated, but not limited by feminist analysis.

Examines the styles of such notables as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Milton and analyzes debates on literary canon and biblical criticism.