Marianne Moore
Encyclopedia
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist
poet
and writer noted for her irony
and wit.
, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor John Milton Moore and his wife, Mary Warner. She grew up in her grandfather's household, her father having left the family before her birth. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College
in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
, until 1915, when Moore began to publish poetry professionally.
, William Carlos Williams
, H.D.
, T. S. Eliot
, and Ezra Pound
beginning with her first publication in 1915. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal The Dial
. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry; much later, she encouraged promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop
, Allen Ginsberg
, John Ashbery
and James Merrill
.
In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from Poetry
. Her Collected Poems of 1951 is perhaps her most rewarded work; it earned the poet the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award
, and the Bollingen Prize
. Moore became a minor celebrity in New York literary circles. She attended boxing matches, baseball games and other public events, dressed in what became her signature garb, a tricorn hat and a black cape. She particularly liked athletics and athletes and was a great admirer of Muhammad Ali
, for whose spoken-word album, I Am the Greatest!, she wrote liner notes. Moore continued to publish poems in various journals, including The Nation, The New Republic
, and Partisan Review
, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism.
Moore corresponded with Ezra Pound
from 1919, even during his incarceration. She opposed Benito Mussolini
and Fascism
from the start and objected to Pound's antisemitism. Moore herself was a conservative Republican
and supported Herbert Hoover
in 1928 and 1932. She was a life-long ally and friend of the American poet Wallace Stevens. See for instance her review of Stevens's first anthology, Harmonium
, and in particular her comment about the influence of Henri Rousseau on the poem "Floral Decorations for Bananas
'".
Her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry", in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." It also expressed her idea that meter
, or anything else that claims the exclusive title "poetry", is not as important as delight in language and precise, heartfelt expression in any form. She often composed her own poetry in syllabics
. These syllabic lines from "Poetry" illustrate her position: poetry is a matter of skill and honesty in any form whatsoever, while anything written poorly, although in perfect form, cannot be poetry:
's "E-car" project, and his co-worker Bob Young to provide input with regard to the naming of the car. Wallace's rationale was "Who better to understand the nature of words than a poet?" On October 1955, Moore was approached to submit "inspirational names" for the E-car, and on November 7, she offered her list of names, which included such notables as "Resilient Bullet", "Ford Silver Sword", "Mongoose Civique", "Varsity Stroke", "Pastelogram" and "Andante con Moto." On December 8, she submitted her last and most famous name, "Utopian Turtletop." The E-car was finally christened by Ford as the Edsel
.
Moore moved to 35 West 9th Street in Manhattan in 1966, after 37 years at 260 Cumberland Street in Brooklyn. Not long after throwing the first pitch for the 1968 season in Yankee Stadium, Moore suffered a stroke. She suffered a series of strokes thereafter, and died in 1972. She was interred in Gettysburg's Evergreen Cemetery. The New York Times devoted an entire page to an account of her life and death.
Moore never married. Her living room has been preserved in its original layout in the collections of the Rosenbach Museum & Library
in Philadelphia. Her entire library, knick-knacks (including a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle
), all of her correspondence, photographs, and poetry drafts are available for public viewing.
Like Robert Lowell, Moore revised a great many of her early poems (including "Poetry") in later life. These appeared in The Complete Poems of 1967, after which critics tended to accept as canonical the "elderly Moore's revisions of the exuberant texts of her own poetic youth." Facsimile editions of the theretofore out-of-print 1924 Observations became available in 2002. Since that time there has been no critical consensus about which versions are authoritative.
In 1996, she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame
.
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and writer noted for her irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
and wit.
Life
Moore was born in Kirkwood, MissouriKirkwood, Missouri
Kirkwood is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in St. Louis County, Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,540. Founded in 1853, the city is named for James Pugh Kirkwood, builder of the Pacific Railroad through that town. It was the first planned suburb located west...
, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor John Milton Moore and his wife, Mary Warner. She grew up in her grandfather's household, her father having left the family before her birth. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879 at Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the school was the first off-reservation boarding school, and it became a model for Indian boarding schools in other locations...
in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle is a borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The name is traditionally pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2010 census, the borough...
, until 1915, when Moore began to publish poetry professionally.
Poetic career
Moore came to the attention of poets as diverse as Wallace StevensWallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
, William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
, H.D.
H.D.
H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
beginning with her first publication in 1915. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal The Dial
The Dial
The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...
. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry; much later, she encouraged promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
and James Merrill
James Merrill
James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies...
.
In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
. Her Collected Poems of 1951 is perhaps her most rewarded work; it earned the poet the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, and the Bollingen Prize
Bollingen Prize
The Bollingen Prize for Poetry, which is currently awarded every two years by Beinecke Library of Yale University, is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement.-Inception and controversy:The...
. Moore became a minor celebrity in New York literary circles. She attended boxing matches, baseball games and other public events, dressed in what became her signature garb, a tricorn hat and a black cape. She particularly liked athletics and athletes and was a great admirer of Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
, for whose spoken-word album, I Am the Greatest!, she wrote liner notes. Moore continued to publish poems in various journals, including The Nation, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, and Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism.
Moore corresponded with Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
from 1919, even during his incarceration. She opposed Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
from the start and objected to Pound's antisemitism. Moore herself was a conservative Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
and supported Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
in 1928 and 1932. She was a life-long ally and friend of the American poet Wallace Stevens. See for instance her review of Stevens's first anthology, Harmonium
Harmonium (poetry collection)
Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...
, and in particular her comment about the influence of Henri Rousseau on the poem "Floral Decorations for Bananas
Floral Decorations for Bananas
"Floral Decorations for Bananas" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published Measure 26 "Floral Decorations for Bananas" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published Measure 26 "Floral Decorations for...
'".
Her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry", in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." It also expressed her idea that meter
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
, or anything else that claims the exclusive title "poetry", is not as important as delight in language and precise, heartfelt expression in any form. She often composed her own poetry in syllabics
Syllabic verse
Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed number of syllables per line regardless of the number of stresses that are present. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as Japanese or modern French or Finnish — as opposed to stress-timed languages such as English, in which...
. These syllabic lines from "Poetry" illustrate her position: poetry is a matter of skill and honesty in any form whatsoever, while anything written poorly, although in perfect form, cannot be poetry:
- 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
Later years
In 1955, Moore was informally invited by David Wallace, manager of marketing research for FordFord Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
's "E-car" project, and his co-worker Bob Young to provide input with regard to the naming of the car. Wallace's rationale was "Who better to understand the nature of words than a poet?" On October 1955, Moore was approached to submit "inspirational names" for the E-car, and on November 7, she offered her list of names, which included such notables as "Resilient Bullet", "Ford Silver Sword", "Mongoose Civique", "Varsity Stroke", "Pastelogram" and "Andante con Moto." On December 8, she submitted her last and most famous name, "Utopian Turtletop." The E-car was finally christened by Ford as the Edsel
Edsel
The Edsel was an automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company during the 1958, 1959, and 1960 model years. The Edsel never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly. Consequently, the Ford Motor Company lost millions of dollars on the Edsel's development,...
.
Moore moved to 35 West 9th Street in Manhattan in 1966, after 37 years at 260 Cumberland Street in Brooklyn. Not long after throwing the first pitch for the 1968 season in Yankee Stadium, Moore suffered a stroke. She suffered a series of strokes thereafter, and died in 1972. She was interred in Gettysburg's Evergreen Cemetery. The New York Times devoted an entire page to an account of her life and death.
Moore never married. Her living room has been preserved in its original layout in the collections of the Rosenbach Museum & Library
Rosenbach Museum & Library
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is located within two 19th-century townhouses at 2008 and 2010 Delancey Place in Philadelphia. The historic houses contain the collections and treasures of Philip Rosenbach and his younger brother Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach...
in Philadelphia. Her entire library, knick-knacks (including a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle
Mickey Mantle
Mickey Charles Mantle was an American professional baseball player. Mantle is regarded by many to be the greatest switch hitter of all time, and one of the greatest players in baseball history. Mantle was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.Mantle was noted for his hitting...
), all of her correspondence, photographs, and poetry drafts are available for public viewing.
Like Robert Lowell, Moore revised a great many of her early poems (including "Poetry") in later life. These appeared in The Complete Poems of 1967, after which critics tended to accept as canonical the "elderly Moore's revisions of the exuberant texts of her own poetic youth." Facsimile editions of the theretofore out-of-print 1924 Observations became available in 2002. Since that time there has been no critical consensus about which versions are authoritative.
In 1996, she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame
St. Louis Walk of Fame
The St. Louis Walk of Fame honors well-known people from St. Louis, Missouri, who made contributions to culture of the United States. All inductees were either born in the Greater St. Louis area or spent their formative or creative years there...
.
Selected works
- Poems, 1921. Published in London by H.D.H.D.H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
and Bryher. Moore disapproved of the timing, editing, selections, and format of this collection. See The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, ed. Bonnie Costello et al., NY: Knopf, 1997, p. 164. In a letter to Bryher, Moore notes ". . . I wouldn't have the poems appear now if I could help it and would not have some of them ever appear and would make certain changes . . . ." - Observations, 1924.
- Selected Poems, 1935. Introduction by T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. - The Pangolin and Other Verse, 1936.
- What Are Years, 1941.
- Nevertheless, 1944.
- A Face, 1949.
- Collected Poems, 1951.
- Fables of La Fontaine, 1954. Verse translations of La Fontaine's fables.
- Predilections: Literary Essays, 1955.
- Idiosyncrasy and Technique, 1966.
- Like a Bulwark, 1956.
- O To Be a Dragon, 1959.
- Idiosyncrasy and Technique, 1959.
- The Marianne Moore Reader, 1961.
- Eight Poems, 1962, with illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker.
- The Absentee: A Comedy in Four Acts, 1962. A dramatization of Maria EdgeworthMaria EdgeworthMaria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
's novel. - Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, 1963. Adaptations from Perrault.
- Dress and Kindred Subjects, 1965.
- Poetry and Criticism, 1965.
- Tell Me, Tell Me: Granite, Steel and Other Topics, 1966.
- The Complete Poems, 1967.
- The Accented Syllable, 1969.
- Homage to Henry James, 1971. Essays by Moore, Edmund WilsonEdmund WilsonEdmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
, etc. - The Complete Poems, 1981.
- The Complete Prose, 1986, edited by Patricia C. Willis.
- The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, edited by Bonnie Costello, Celeste Goodridge, Cristanne Miller. Knopf, 1997.
External links
- Yale College Lecture on Marianne Moore audio, video and full transcripts from Open Yale Courses http://poets.org website: biography, 6 poems, prose, and criticism.
- St. Louis Walk of Fame
- Modern American Poetry: Marianne Moore