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 i...