Marianne Moore

Modernist poet Marianne Moore may be aptly compared to painter Pablo Picasso; both broke free of traditional forms, assembling old and new ideas in previously unseen ways. Moore’s work was groundbreaking- even within the modernist movement. Not only was Moore original in her form of poetry or the styles shoe chose to espouse, she also visually crafted her poetry on the page. Her poem “Poetry” aptly portrays her style:

Poetry:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.



Ironically, as the speaker is unsure of how they feel about poetry in general, Marianne Moore was unsure of how she felt about her poem ‘Poetry’. ‘Poetry’ went through countless revisions that spanned five decades- varying anywhere from thirty eight to four lines in length. Moore however, does not seem to be attacking all poetry in general, but simply that which “that is neither honest nor sincere but that has found fashionable approval” (Hall); but she does this without offering a definition for poetry, or for what she believes poetry ought to be. Some poetry is disdained as simply lacking and therefore cannot be viewed as genuine.

‘Poetry’ is formed by long sentences that are cropped into lines of various lengths, often with short juxtaposed against long. Her poem reads similarly to prose, though they often incorporate rhyme in a sometimes hidden but always poetical way. Using prose broken into stanzas of poetry, though more commonplace today, was ingenious and revolutionary in Moore’s time. Its use spoke as a testament to using modernism to break the grounds of the ordinary. ‘Poetry’ seems to join together the two forms- with broken prose ironically used to question poetry in general.
Moore’s work in general fits well into the conglomeration of poets at her time. Her work does not lean to the sentimental or ornate, but is detail oriented and reserved. She focuses on the everyday with a special emphasis on nature, yet does not become overly philosophical or pretentious with her works. Her work epitomizes the breaking grounds of the modernist movement without slipping into the style “of critic nor of connoisseur, both roles being too peacock- tailed and dominating for her taste” (Norton 431).


Works Cited

Hall, Donald: Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal. New York: Pegasus, 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Western Publishing Company.

Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry