An Appetite for Poetry

by Frank Kermode

Frank Kermode is the preeminent practitioner of the art of criticism in the English-speaking world. As such his task entails the readiness to evaluate in general terms the widest range of texts, both ancient and modern, and also the ability to make public sense of the seemingly arcane debates about theories of literature as they pertain to the ongoing process of evaluation. It has been Kermode’s distinction to make a virtue―as all the best critics have done―of the necessarily occasional nature of his profession. That virtue is evident in every page of this set of essays.

This is a book in which Kermode asks the reader to share his pleasure in the literature of a set of major writers―Milton, Eliot, Stevens. He vividly evokes Milton after the Restoration of Charles II, with a fine speculative discussion of the interplay between his personal and political circumstances and the preoccupations of his poetry. He sets before us T. S. Eliot living in a condition of permanent exile, Wallace Stevens in his old age dwelling poetically in Connecticut, and author/critic William Empson, whose singular career was marked by both the pleasure of the text and the delight in conceptual issues that characterizes so much of the contemporary taste for theory. Other essays draw our attention to debates on the literary canon and problems of biblical criticism and their implications for the study of narrative in particular and the interpretation of secular literary texts in general.

These are professional essays that nevertheless defy the excesses of modern professionalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the polemical Prologue to the book, in which Kermode sorts out the good from the meretricious in contemporary criticism. He argues that some proclaimed theorists “seem largely to have lost interest in literature,” while the best, like Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, have never lost what Kermode prizes most highly, the very appetite or hunger for poetry and literature. Always readable, elegant even on gnarled matters, and courteous in contexts where others are bad-tempered, An Appetite for Poetry is the work of one of the most distinguished minds of our time. In reaffirming the professional responsibilities of criticism now being neglected, it displays a generous hospitality to new ideas.

Genres: Poetry

254 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 1989

About the author

Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2003).

Reviews

[Ярослава · Rating 3 out of 5]

Принагідна збірка випадкових і здебільшого не надто натхненних статей, але ж Кермоуда читаємо не для того. Є літературознавці, які мене більше інтригують професійно; але не знаю літературознавця, який би мені більше подобався стилістично. Читаю для натхнення))) Оці всі його "The Common Reader is of course not a person but a constituency, and everybody not seeking to grind an ax must know that by now it is a pretty rotten borough" чи (з "Відчуття закінчення") "It is not expected of critics as it is of poets that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways in which we try to make sense of our lives."

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is, as its subtitle suggests, a collection of essays in literary interpretation.

I'm not sure what audience this was written for. I believe some of these began life as lectures. I suspect not entirely for the general reader, but for the university student or the academic. That's not a bad thing. It is good to have your brain stretched and to have to reach for the dictionary on a semi-regular basis.

This collection talks of literary theory, of Freud, of exegesis, of divination, of canon - both Biblical and secular, and of 'the plain sense of things'. Or the impossibility of finding plain sense. There is much talk too of hermeneutics, of shoes and ships and sealing wax. Of cabbages, and Kings. (Sorry.)

Some essays here are harder to understand - for the lay reader - than others. Freud and Interpretation really hurt my brain. It needed re-reading and re-reading.

The book begins with a long prologue about the state of criticism and the dominance of theory. That academics seemed to find more interest in the theories than in the actual literature. And, like a lot of academic writing there is much attempting to define terms that to a lay person seem not to need definition: literature for example. But then I realised that I had no idea what the difference between 'literature' and 'books' was. How does one define literature? Who decides? The same thing applies to canons.

And I realised that by the time I got to the end of this book I was thinking about a lot of things in depth that I previously hadn't really thought about at all. I mean there's a tendency to fall back on that definition of pornography, "I don't really know what it is, but I know it when I see it." Or that other old classic, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."

In that respect Kermode's book has been incredibly valuable. It has given my brain a little shot of...something. Whether it'll last I don't know.

I do know that literary theories seem very rarefied and designed to keep ordinary people out of discussions about reading and books. I do know that academic writing should be clear and understandable (within reason.) And that people who have created theories in the name of democratising literature have, it seems to me, built and entirely new set of ivory towers from which to look down on the world.

This has been a difficult book for me but in the best sense.