Marianne Moore

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.

Marianne Moore (15 November 1887 – 5 February 1972) was a Modernist American poet and writer. For her Collected Poems (1951), she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize.

Quotes

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.

• Poetry is a magic of pauses ... not a thing of tunes, but of heightened consciousness.
  • Poetry and Criticism - American Peoples Encyclopedia , Groller , New York 1965
• One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.
  • Idiosyncrasy and Technique 1958
• Precision, economy of statement, logic employed to ends that are disinterested ... liberate the imagination.
  • Forward to Marianne Moore Reader 1961
• You know I don't really understand much of my poetry myself. Of course, I was convinced I understood it when I wrote it !
  • Quoted by Malvina Hoffman in her Memoir - Yesterday is Tomorrow 1961
• I don't consider In Distrust of Merits a poem. It's just a burst of feelings. It's emotion recorded, a 'haphazard form ' a protest.
  • Interview with Grace Shulman. Quarterly Review of Literature 1969

• I think books are chiefly responsible for my dogged self determined efforts to write; books & verisimilitude; I like to describe things.
  • Essay - 1957 Subject, Predicate, Object
• For me, a poem starts when a felicitious phrase springs to mind.
• I never plan a stanza, words cluster like chromosomes determining the procedure, later, I may influence or thin it.
• What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.
  • Interview with Donald Hall in November 1960, pub.'Paris Review' The Art of Poetry, no 26 (1961)
• Poetry is: a classifying, a botanizing, a voracity of contemplation, a pleasure, an indulgence, an infatuation in which the actual is a deft benficence.
  • Moore's Review in Criterion 1936 of Wallace Stevens Ideas of Order
• I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.
  • Letter to Miss Gray in 1936 in response for a biographical sketch. Reproduced in Marianne Moore - A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth, Macmillan, New York 1990
• A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
  • Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series, ed. George Plimpton (1963)

• Omissions are not accidents.
  • The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967), Author's note, p. vi

• A willingness to satisfy contradictory objections to one's manner of writing might turn one's work into the donkey that finally found itself being carried by its masters, since some readers suggest that quotation marks are disruptive of pleasant progress; others, that notes to what should be complete are a pedantry or evidence of an insufficiently realized task. But since in anything I have written, there have been lines in which the chief interest is borrowed, and I have not yet been able to outgrow this hybrid method of composition, acknowledgements seem only honest. Perhaps those who are annoyed by provisos, detainments, and postscripts could be persuaded to take probity on faith and disregard the notes.
  • The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967), "A Note On The Notes", p. 262

• Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.
  • As quoted in Marianne Moore, Poet of Affection (1977) by Pamela White Hadas, p. 6
• War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
  • "Comment" in The Dial, No. 86 (April 1929)

Prose

• I have learned more from Ezra Pound about writing than from anyone else.
  • Review of Letters of Ezra Pound 1950
• Music should be directed by the ear, poetry by the imagination
  • Review -Jean Gaingne -New & Selected Poems 1967
• There is an inevitable connection between music and poetry.
  • Quoted in Poetry Review 26 Sept 1935
• I tend to write in patterned arrangement with rhymes.. I try to secure an effect of flowing continuity and the correspondence between verse and music.
  • Oxford Anthology of American Literature 1938
• I look upon verse as an exercise in composition.
  • Authors of 1951 Speaking for Themselves NY Herald Tribue 7 Oct 1951
• Whatever it is.. poem.. play, story..it must hold attention.
  • Poetry as Expression - The Writer April 1962
• Yes, I believe in prayer, as a mystery which can endow one with more power perhaps than any other spiritual mystery, yet a mystery that cannot be exposited to a point where it is not a mystery.
  • I Believe in Prayer - - How Prayer helps me The Dial Press 1955

Poetry

• One may be pardoned, yes I know
  one may, for love for love, undying (Ephesians 6:24)
  • Voracities and Verities Sometimes are Interesting
• Blessed the man whose faith is different
  from possessiveness - of a kind not framed by 'things which do appear' ( Hebrews 11:3)
  • Blessed be the Man
• There is hate's crown beneath which all is
  death; there's love without which none
  is king.
• There never was a war that was
  not inward; I must
  fight till I conquered in myself what
  causes war
  • In Distrust of Merits
• In Homer, existence
  is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
  ' the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual',
  • To a Giraffe
• Tell me, Tell me where might there be a refuge for me
  from egocentricity
  and its propensity to bisect,
  mis-state, misunderstand
  and obliterate continuity?
  • Tell Me, Tell Me
• O to be a dragon,
  a symbol of the power of Heaven — of silkworm
  size or immense; at times invisible.
  Felicitous phenomenon!
  • "O To Be A Dragon" in O To Be A Dragon (1957)
• You are not male nor female, but a plan
  deep-set within the heart of man.
  • "Sun" from Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)

• Consume hostility;
  employ your weapon in this meeting-place of surging enmity!
  Insurgent feet shall not outrun
  multiplied flames, O Sun.
  • "Sun" from Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)

Collected Poems (1951)

• 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.
  • Poetry
• If you demand on the other hand,
  the raw material of poetry in
  all its rawness and
  that which is on the other hand
  genuine, you are interested in poetry.
  • Poetry
• 'Hebrew poetry is,
  prose with a sort of heightened consciousness' Ecstasy
  affords
  the occasion expediency, determines the form
  • The Past is the Present

Poetry (1919)

"Poetry", first published in Others : A Magazine of the New Verse (July 1919), later in Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (1920), edited by Alfred Kreymborg. This underwent many revisions in published and unpublished forms, the most controversial being in The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967) where only the first 2 sentences are retained in the main presentation, and the rest of it is presented as "Original version" in the endnotes of the book.

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.

The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

That which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.

So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths...

Though many of these are available in other volumes, these quotes are listed in the sequence in which they occur in The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003) edited by Grace Schulman, which arranges them in chronological sections. Dates provided are those of first publication, where known.

He's not out seeing a sight but the rock crystal thing to see...

Beauty is everlasting and dust is for a time.

Some speak of things we know, as new;
And you, of things unknown as things forgot.

Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall.

Staff and effigy of the animal which by shedding its skin is a sign of renewal — the symbol of medicine.

The Gordian knot need not be cut.

None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.

• that which is impossible to force, it is impossible
  to hinder.
  • "Radical"

• My father used to say "Superior people never make long visits."
  • "Silence"

• The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
  not in silence, but restraint.
  • "Silence"

• This is a strange fraternity — these sea lions and land lions,
  land unicorns and sea unicorns;
  the lion civilly rampant,
  tame and concessive like the long-tailed bear of Ecuador —
  the lion standing up against this screen of woven air
  which is the forest:
  the unicorn also, on its hind legs in reciprocity.
  • "Sea Unicorns and Land Unicorns"

• So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear
  but never caught,
  the unicorn has been preserved
  by an unmatched device
  wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths ...
  • "Sea Unicorns and Land Unicorns"

• He's not out
  seeing a sight but the rock
  crystal thing to see — the startling El Greco
  brimming with inner light — that
  covets nothing that it has let go. This then you may know
  as the hero.
  • "The Hero"

• What is our innocence,
  what is our guilt? All are
  naked, none is safe.
  • "What Are Years?"

• Beauty is everlasting
  and dust is for a time.
  • "In Distrust of Merits" (1944)

• Some speak of things we know, as new;
  And you, of things unknown as things forgot.
  • "Quoting an Also Private Thought" (this poem is a very slight reworking of an earlier poem "As Has Been Said")

• We Call Them the Brave
  who likely were reluctant to be brave.
  • "We Call Them the Brave" (the title of this poem is also obviously meant to be read as its first line, though set apart)

• What of it? We call them brave
  perhaps? Yes; what if the time should come
  when no one will fight for anything
  and there's nothing of worth to save.
  • "We Call Them the Brave"

• Maine should be pleased that its animal
  is not a waverer, and rather
  than fight, lets the primed quill fall.
  Shallow oppressor, intruder,
  insister, you have found a resister.
  • Of the porcupine, in "Apparition of Splendor"

• A symbol from the first, of mastery,
  experiments such as Hippocrates made
  and substituted for vague
  speculation stayed
  the ravages of plague.
  • "The Staff of Aesculapius"

• Staff and effigy of the animal
  which by shedding its skin
  is a sign of renewal —
  the symbol of medicine.
  • "The Staff of Aesculapius"

• The problems is mastered — insupportably
  tiring when it was impending.
  Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom.

  The Gordian knot need not be cut.

  • "Charity Overcoming Envy"

• Love, ah Love, when your slipknot's drawn,
  One can but say, "Farewell, good sense."
  • "The Lion in Love"

• We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained
  in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic:
  Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic,
  None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.
  • "The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maid"

Quotes about Marianne Moore

• Although Le Guin tended to discount the distinction between dream-world and "real" world, she made a sharp distinction between the real world and the world of science fiction. When asked if there is really a difference between what we call reality and science fiction, she retorted decisively: "You bet you there is. You keep that firmly in mind. It's a fiction. You know what Marianne Moore said about imaginary gardens with real toads-sometimes there are real gardens with imaginary toads in them. But it's a mixture. Fiction writers write fiction, particularly in science fiction. People forget this and say they are describing reality or they are predicting reality. But the very most that a fiction writer can do is offer an option."
  • 1980 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin (2008)

• I created a "dream world" that I tried grounding absolutely and solidly in a real place, the Napa Valley, which I know stone by stone. Marianne Moore said real toads in imaginary gardens is what poetry is about. Well, what I did was create imaginary toads in a real garden. I tried working out in that book the world that I think I would like best to live in. Although this one will do.
  • 1993 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin (2008)

• Until recently this female anger and this furious awareness of the Man's power over her were not available materials to the female poet, who tended to write of Love as the source of her suffering, and to view that victimization by Love as an almost inevitable fate. Or, like Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, she kept sexuality at a measured and chiseled distance in her poems.
  • Adrienne Rich On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)

• I discovered that the woman poet most admired at the time (by men) was Marianne Moore, who was maidenly, elegant, intellectual, discreet.
  • Adrienne Rich On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979)

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Marianne Moore

• Profile at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
• Profile and criticism at Poets.org
• Selected Poetry of Marianne Moore at the University of Toronto
• "Poetry"
• Interview in Paris Review (Summer-Fall 1961)
• Modern American Poetry: Marianne Moore
• St. Louis Walk of Fame