Le poesie

by Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden (Contributor), T.S. Eliot (Contributor)

Marianne Moore disse una volta a un intervistatore: «Mi sembra che Wallace Stevens metta il dito su quella cosa che è la poesia quando parla di “una violenza interna che ci protegge da una violenza esterna”». A quella «violenza interna» Marianne Moore dedicò la vita, distillandola in un’opera segnata ovunque da una vocazione esigente per la forma perfetta. Esemplare per la fedeltà e il coraggio con cui difendeva il suo mondo fisico e metafisico, per la coerenza con cui credeva nella poesia senza temere di essere considerata inaccessibile e senza mai abbassare i suoi aculei, incrollabile «come una fortezza», la Moore si impose all’ammirazione di poeti così diversi come Pound, Eliot, W.C. Williams e W.H. Auden. Oggi la sua opera poetica è universalmente considerata una pietra preziosa, inscalfita e durissima, che continua a rifulgere di una luce lieve e limpida, inconfondibile. La presentiamo qui nella sua interezza, in una traduzione di eminente qualità, una delle più felici che la lingua italiana possieda di un grande poeta moderno.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, American, 20th Century, Womens, Fiction

531 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

Reviews

[Sean Barrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many of you have even heard of Marianne Moore?

I'm genuinely curious on this point because I hadn't until last week. Her relative obscurity (at least here in the UK) is a bit of a shame because she has an important voice in the world of poetry.

Her poetry is unusual and it’s very hard to understand because of the multiple voices she uses and constant quotation that runs through the work. It’s very difficult to discern an overall direction of her poems because more often than not, the longer pieces, present opposing opinions. It’s almost like the poetry is in conversation with itself, demonstrating different point of views on a particular topic without giving any of them any particular weight or prominence. So it feels circular at times and contradictory and its unlike anything I have ever read before.

“... we
do not admire what
we cannot understand.”

There is no “I” within her poems. There is no poet who has a powerful opinion or is subjecting the world to their all-consuming emotions. There is simply observation, detached and levelled. Moore reports what she sees but offers no comment.

Marriage

"This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation"

On reading this it would seem the poem is a feminist statement against the patriarchy and the trappings of marriage, though the poem concludes very differently. It’s like she has fixed on one singular theme, marriage, and has done all she can to show everything marriage can be from the good to the bad, from the warmth to the life sentence. It’s almost like Imagist poetry but with conversational elements. And it’s quite unique.

I think what hampered her development was her isolation. Whereas Pound, T.S Eliot and Williams were in conversation with each other, Moore wrote alone. She didn’t have the same strong literary circle to help hone her ideas. She wrote alone and spent her life living with her mother (rumour has it that they even shared a bed into adulthood and until her mother’s death.) Moore never married and remained a solitary figure throughout her entire life, though she was fiercely independent and functional in her loneliness. Though the real hampering was her confidence: she never new how clever she was. And she didn’t really consider herself worthy of being called a poet.

Well she is worthy. Her peers recognised it and tried to get her published long before she was brave enough to actually put her work out there. Her voice is worth hearing.

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marianne Moore

with verses of ermine
and a three-cornered hat
you promenade down the avenues
of poetry head held high
twixt halos of street-lamps
and attitudes of humankind—
no animal escapes
your sidewalk
gaze

your own gait like an egret’s
and your macaw fingers clutching
at stars and your luna moth mind flitting
from dream to dream in the emaciated
Brooklyn night—these are part
and parcel of
what you
are

you love baseball and boxing and bric-a-brac
and words that glimmer like gewgaws
in the windows of antique
tears

sunday afternoons in Central Park
arm in arm with mother dear
you rhapsodize over jockeys
and prize fighters
poking at dead leaves with your stick
never failing to particularize
—by bringing everything back to
the strangeness of our having bodies—
every shape and every
size

everything is strange
come to think of it
you are strange
and I am strange
and stars are strange
and trees are strange
and streets are strange
and the pangolin is very strange
why the whole wide gamut of the world is
strange

nor do you wish to unstrange the strange
you keep it as it is Marianne
eccentric beautiful colourful gay
mysterious and mind-numbingly bizarre
and you count syllables on the knuckles of your left hand
as if writing verse were a game
made up by the strangest of child-
ren

and we the ape-like reader
in our jungle of books
scratch our heads and backsides
and go to sleep
in the lush foliage of
your strange
poems

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marianne Moore is delightful, and one of the few poets I know that I'd actually enjoy hanging out with. It'd be great - we'd sit around drinking tea and talking about art, and then she'd be like, "Hey, do you want to hear about squids?" And then she would tell me all about squids and then share the poem she wrote about them, and it would be lovely.

Marianne Moore studied biology, so she really does write about stuff like that - nautiluses and fish and pelicans and buffalo, and it's all really good. She wrote a six-page poem just about an octopus!

"An Octopus

of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies "in grandeur and in mass"
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
pseudo-podia
made of glass that will bend - a much needed invention -
comprising twenty-eight ice-fields from fifty to five hundred
feet thick,
of unimagined delicacy."

That is so cool. And then she wrote this one, which I also love:

"I May, I Might, I Must

If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try."

Marianne Moore, you are a cool lady.

Read for: Modern Poetry

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

They fought the enemy,
we fight fat living and self-pity.

I loved more than a few but many escaped me. Kenner’s distinctions between Moore and Wallace Stevens appear valid as far as parsing characteristics but I still find it suspicious to regard one as Modern and the other as Post Romantic. Moore does possess a beguiling humor which I appreciated. She also appears to shudder at the notion that someone will take her excessively serious.

[Andrew]

In a world in which science is by and large alien to the general public, nature by and large segregated off in little-visited and increasingly encroached-upon designated zones, and the very concept of poetry almost laughable by nature, Marianne Moore is a refreshing anecdote. Her work is scientific in its analysis, but not science, makes so much of its subject the natural world, without being the godawful "nature writing" you might have been unfortunate enough to encounter, and self-consciously poetic without sounding like something a smart 15 year old would write.

I might add that I like her earlier, icier work better -- when she becomes a bit more playful with rhyme and prosody, it starts to feel weirdly like Eminem's flow, with real frogs in imaginary gardens instead of Shady being locked in Mariah Carey's basement (I can't be the only one who thinks that). Which is fine if there's a beat, less fine on paper.

[Grace Burns]

To be admired is to be far away and to be far away is to be silent.

“If “compression is the first grace of style,” / you have it.”

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her devices of near-rhymes and syllabic (as opposed to metric) verse structures are well known but the result she gets from them is underrated - as the best blankverse/alexandrine writers have made use of subsitutions, Moore's verse becomes something like a strainer where a variety of rhythmic and prosodic pulses can slowly shift through a regular structure; her device of opening&closing on self-contained stanzas but proceeding irregularly&overflowing sentence structure in the middle verses resembles a sonata like this. It produces a very lively and intricate verse that realizes Pound's looser re-conception of form&music in a way that Ezra never achieved. Her dictum, meanwhile, achieves (and earlier) the same distant distortion of the natural voice that Auden and Bishop would do in her wake and, coupled with the musicality and Moore's unique voice, surpasses both in my opinion. Her choice of content is also exciting, being primarily versifications of newspaper&magazine articles that she found interesting, and uses her musicality&voice in conjunct with the objects/phenomena in question to produce elegant&intricate treatments of subjects that remind me of Donne/Marvell and the sonneteers of the 16th century ... This book is not 'the complete poems' as its title suggests, being a highly edited and redacted version of her ouevre made in old age; but it seems that this allowed for her to produce an essentially flawless volume (only a few scattered poems, and the La Fontaine translations, fall short for me). Became perhaps my favorite poet within 20 pages.

[Hao Guang Tse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marianne Moore is a modern force of nature. I was first attracted to her writing by the precise strength of 'An Octopus', where cold observation and quotation somehow form a remarkable synthesis with a fierce love for the outdoors and for words.

She tends to frustrate when writing about more (to my mind) quotidian subjects, especially when her aim seems to be straightforward appreciation or praise. Many of the baseball poems as well as 'Tom Fool at Jamaica' fall into this category. She can also come across as writing with too stiff an upper lip, as it were. 'Only wood weasels shall associate with me', she declares at one point, and many of her poems take on a morally didactic tone.

Despite these traits, she seems to me less a Puritan propagandist than an eccentric aunt, gently nagging the nephew-reader to do the right thing. Her poetry-prose is never self-aggrandizing ('Poetry / I, too, dislike it') but her words are chosen with such care that she seems less a poet and more a sculptor with words ('Twisted torcs and gold new-moon-shaped / lunulae aren't jewelry / like the purple-coral fuchsia-tree's.').

This isn't really a Collected Marianne Moore. True to my sense of her impeccable propriety, she removed poems and prefixed the collection with 'Omissions are not accidents'. It would be instructive to discover what she left out and why, if only to get a glimpse of those parts of her mind that she felt less inclined to display.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just adding this book today. I have it wrapped carefully and stored even more carefully in a place of honor but somehow forgot that I had this book in my collection when I initially included my book inventory. I bought this treasure at the library in Kent, CT. The book was sold to me containing a handwritten personal letter from the author, folded inside the jacket. I don't know this to be true but I'm assuming the person that received this charming letter from Miss Moore placed the letter inside the jacket for safe keeping. Her handwriting is an art form itself. Marianne Moore is considered a major influential American poet. It is very important to buy the book version of her poems because she uses the power of indentation in versing her poems and if you are using a form that does not allow for the indentations, you are missing out on the tone and brilliance of her poem as she intended it to be read. It is impossible to see the true beauty of her work by not reading only one poem but savoring the entire collection. Marianne Moore is an American treasure.

[Gerardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

AAAA

[Werner]

I read this collection back in 2004, and liked it at the time; I was also engaged enough and challenged enough by the poems to take 12 pages of handwritten notes on them, analyzing meanings (actually more than 12 pages --the last one breaks off in mid-sentence and a 13th page is missing, misplaced somehow.) I consider Moore a talented poetess. But when I purposed to write a retrospective review of it last night, I realized that, even with my notes and the book in front of me, I couldn't recall any of the poems; the impression they made didn't last. That's not necessarily any fault of Moore's as a writer; it's more likely my own deficiency as a poetry reader. But I realized that I'll have to reread this book sometime before I attempt to review it. So I'm writing this (relatively) short note to stand in the meantime, in lieu of a review.

[Domenico Fina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marianne Moore si legge a 20 anni e si può rileggere anche a 120. Resta l'incanto.
Scrive di pangolini catafratti che hanno le scaglie della regolarità di una pigna e questi quasi-carciofi sanno camminare sotto la luce della luna anzi, sul raggio stesso della luna.
Scrive che fu la pazienza a proteggere l'anima come i panni il corpo contro il freddo
E di Peter che è un gatto con la faccia di prugna secca che sa parlare ma nella sua insolenza resta zitto. E poi che importa ?
quando uno è franco, la sua stessa presenza è un complimento.
Scrive di non amare i diamanti ma il bagliore di lampada nell'erba
Che non c'è mai stata una guerra che non fosse dentro di noi; e io devo combattere finché non avrò vinto entro me stessa ciò che è causa di guerra e non credevo.

[Chris Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is great, these poems are great. Moore was simultaneously ahead of her time, completely of her time, and rooted in the most classic sensibilities of poetry. She has a beautiful and massive vocabulary and she left me in the dust with it many times (in a very pleasant way).

I want to say that her poems are basically like children's poems for adults, they are generally very simple in theme or topic, very playful in their language, and remarkably imaginative.

Many of them are about animals, and have lots of taxonomic details. She mentions double rainbows in one.
They all made me feel good to read.

[Kody Dibble · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron, iron is iron till it is rust.
There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I have conquered in myself what
causes war, but I would not believe it.
I inwardly did nothing.
O Iscariot-like crime!
Beauty is everlasting
and dust is for a time."

Excerpt from "In distrust of merits" by Marianne Moore


Independent, unique, solo, chaotic full of gripe and surrender.. These are words and phrases I would use to describe some of Marianne's work. Most famous poets have an ensemble of poems that create a euphuism for who they are..Marianne however writes in a delicate yet intrusive way...One that creates a laissez faire relationship with the reader and poem. The euphuism in Marianne's poems isn't drawn out or vagrant. It's magically scattered in a rudimental way that provides no efficacy of thought. This to ME specifically is genius! Perhaps, because I also write in this style poetically, I find it so appealing :). My poems, sometimes have the same unnatural gilding that streams like a grapevine throughout. However so, Marianne has perfected this technique and I do bravo the assortment of poems she has created. Toward the end we find some rather uninteresting poems but non the less decently written. Overall a wonderful collection of fine poetry by the lone-poet herself.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read through much of this collection alongside a biography of Moore, Holding on Upside Down by Linda Leavell, which I have also reviewed.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Leavell makes clear that Marianne Moore achieved great critical skill long before she found her voice as a mature poet. Some of her best writing was in the form of reviews. Similarly, Moore became an advocate of the younger poet, Elizabeth Bishop, and recommended her to influential critics and a publisher, at a time when Bishop had yet to put pen to paper and actually write poems. The idea that I am about to enter the lists with a critical review of Moore's work is therefore more than amusing; a bit like a novice challenging a grandmaster to a game of chess.

With the help of Leavell's biography, I have now penetrated far beyond the stage at which it seems a difficult thing to read Moore's poems. I admit that is where I had to start from. The key is to set aside some decent quiet reading time for them. Beyond that, I don't feel any special responsibility to respond to every one of the poems; it would be odd to go through that many different moods in a single week of reading. It is sufficient, and far more than most poets achieve for me, to have emerged with a number of poems that have made a strong impression on me. I will certainly return to this volume on many future occasions.

[Peter Crofts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Utterly unique and, how often do you hear this to describe a poet, funny. With some of the more abstruse poets I find I move on. Not with Moore, rather I want to know what is going on and keep going back to unlock these mischievous mechanisms of language and meaning. As far as I am familiar with the poetry she's also the rare first generation modern who is clearly enraptured by the natural world. Yet this is not the work of a romantic, there is no transcendence or melding with the world evident, instead highly detailed almost incandescent description and metaphor. Ultimately it is the delight of witnessing the world. She's a modernist that can instill in the reader joy. That is a rare thing indeed. Yet her language is clear and precise. There is also a tight internal logic to the poetry as it is based on a syllables. This is not free verse but neither does it follow traditional meter and measure. How she can fuse such a craft like approach to language with such beauty is what makes her so fascinating. She makes me happy.

[Erika B. (SOS BOOKS) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! Okay so I read this book for school and let me tell you Marianne Moore is tough!!! I've called her a biddy many times over the past month! In fact when you first read her you absolutely LOATHE her. Many many times you stop and think, 'What in the hell is she even talking about?!' But then you start digging and her poems become something really really cool. She believed that it was honorable to search and study for meaning and in a way you kinda feel like a knight finally finding the Holy Grail when you finally dissect her poems! If you feel like you would really like a read that will cause your brain to explode then I would gladly suggest picking up a copy of The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. :)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

One must read Marianne. Especially just before sleep. You will have vivid dreams--part in your world and part in hers. A sort of haunting stillness. One avoids reading her like you might have done and like I did with Walt Whitman, both of whom changed my perceptions.

[Steven Phelps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the Modernist poets I find Moore the most approachable (which in a way makes her a terribly unconventional Modernist). Her later work is more sparse, but still full of the allusions and wit (and nature) and cadence that are her hallmarks. Thoroughly enjoyable.

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

What does it mean to read poetry today? Who is our most consequential living poet? The question is ridiculous: the truth is poetry doesn't matter in today's world. But if not now, how could it ever? Before TV, before silent films even, one had to resort to whatever was available for "entertainment"& "escapism", so perhaps poetry meant more at certain times in history, for those meagre aims. On the other extreme religious verse probably serves the same purpose it always has: a few misunderstood phrases memorized out of context to some, and modes of thought and spirit to be contemplated deeply by less. Someone in the middle, a secular poet writing perplexing verse to convey "(something)" however, what has ever been the point of that?

Setting the greater question aside for a moment, my personal criteria for a poet tends to play out like this: I'll read the entire volume like I would a reg'lar book (but faster cuz there's less words >:). If I can get to the end of it it prolly means I found something interesting within, a certain turn of phrase, an atmosphere or texture, and ideally I'd have some semblance of an idea as to what the poet is getting at, what their poetic "thesis" might be. It's all very foggy, obscure, even if when ingested the images appear in moments of hightened crystaline brilliance. Once read through (ideally out loud even if whispered to myself) then it's a matter of digging deeper, seeing what respected readers have to say about it (or "critics" you could call them), absorbing pertinent tidbits of biography, having someone else explain it to me and seeing if it resembles my initial impressions in any way. Then, if there's still enough motivation (and it's bound to come out of nowhere), Re-reading begins, and in those subsequent experiences an actual idea begins to form of the poet.

I did this first with Wallace Stevens. Funny then that after the first few poems of Ms Moore I was muttering to myself that she reminded me of the stoic insurance man from Hartford, Connecticut. In The Necessary Angel Stevens says his favorite poem of his own is "The Emperor of Ice Cream" (It's old Stevey King's fav too :P). His reason for liking it is purely the way it sounds. I got the impression throughout that Ms Moore was choosing her words for the way they sounded in a similarly Stevensian way. Funnier still that I should find in the same slim volume of essays by Stevens, an essay on Marianne Moore!

"Miss Moore's reality is significant. An aesthetic integration is a reality."
"About one of Marianne Moore's Poems" (ibid, 95)



I'd have to agree with old Wally there, even if, for me at the moment the judgment can only be called a generalization. I'm only through part A on the journey of decoding Marianne Moore. My initial impressions are that she has an interesting and intentional turn of phrase, the atmosphere is very rich at times, with some amazing textures (mineral, vegetable, animal), and for an overall thesis, or what Stevens calls a "reality", there is for her a necessity for a certain perception that does away with every superfluous element. A pure poetic experience visioned through the poet is in danger always of being appreciated for the wrong things, which for Ms Moore seems almost worse than missing it altogether. It is ironic then that she seems to speak around the experience, in multisyllabes; forced into figurative language as all poets are, she must demonstrate her thesis in an act — call it ritual if you must, homage is probably more accurate. She says it better in "The Past is the Present":

"Ecstasy affords / the occassion and expediency determines the form."

When it hits, one sees through her eyes, a glowing orb spinning softly, off which all figurative description slides.



So why read poetry? If a poet or poem finds you it is capable of making you aware of something. When that may come into play in your real life (IYRL), and if it will be an advantage, only time can say. It's like asking for something now in order to get something unknown later. Like religion, poetry today requires faith.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

BY DISPOSITION OF ANGELS
Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it.
Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit?
Something heard most clearly when not near it?
Above particularities,
these unparticularities praise cannot violate.
One has seen, in such steadiness never deflected,
how by darkness a star is perfected.
Star that does not ask me if I see it?
Fir that would not wish me to uproot it?
Speech that does not ask me if I hear it?
Mysteries expound mysteries.
Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate,
no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her,
too like him, and a-quiver forever.

As I read these poems, I felt the time they were written, I felt the simple subjects made complex, I felt a thrill at a mastery of language that was different than a lot of the poets I love. They come alive, aloud; on paper, they aren't as powerful. There was a lightness and humor to some that just was so lovely, and made me so interested in this poet. I imagine she was lovely to speak with, lovely to pass time with, and maybe one of those zen like poets that exude calm and warmth.

Excerpts

The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the
sun, split like spun glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices— in and out, illuminating the turquoise sea of bodies.

In the days of Prismatic Color
not in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam
was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the refinement
of early civilization art, but because
of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the
mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation
of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band
of incandescence that was color keep its stripe...

ROSEMARY
Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary—
Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly—
born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company,
braids a garland of festivity.
Not always rosemary— since the flight to Egypt, blooming differently.
With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath,
its flowers—white originally—
turned blue. The herb of memory,
imitating the blue robe of Mary,
is not too legendary
to flower both as symbol and as pungency.
Springing from stones beside the sea,
the height of Christ when thirty-three—
it feeds on dew and to the bee
“hath a dumb language”; is in reality
a kind of Christmas-tree.

What is love and
shall I ever have it?’” The truth
is simple. Banish sloth,
fetter-feigning uncouth
fraud. Trapper Love with noble
noise, the magic sleuth,
as bird-notes prove—
first telecolor-trove— illogically wove
what logic can’t unweave:
one need not shoulder, need not shove

THE ARCTIC OX (OR GOAT)
To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it. Wear qiviut—the underwool of the arctic ox— pulled off it like a sweater; your coat is warm; your conscience, better. I would like a suit of qiviut, so light I did not know I had it on; and in the course of time, another since I had not had to murder the “goat” that grew the fleece that made the first. The musk ox has no musk and it is not an ox— illiterate epithet. Bury your nose in one when wet. It smells of water, nothing else, and browses goatlike on hind legs. Its great distinction is not egocentric scent but that it is intelligent. Chinchillas, otters, water-rats, and beavers, keep us warm but think! a “musk ox” grows six pounds of qiviut; the cashmere, ram, three ounces—that is all—of pashm. Lying in an exposed spot, basking in the blizzard, these ponderosos could dominate the rare-hairs market in Kashan and yet you could not have a choicer pet. They join you as you work; love jumping in and out of holes, play in water with the children, learn fast, know their names, will open gates and invent games. While not incapable of courtship, they may find its servitude and flutter, too much like Procrustes’ bed; so some decide to stay unwed. Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic— even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious, whereas these scarce qivies, with golden fleece and winning ways, outstripping every fur-bearer— there in Vermont quiet— could demand Bold Ruler’s diet: Mountain Valley water, dandelions, carrots, oats— encouraged as well by bed made fresh three times a day— to roll and revel in the hay. Insatiable for willow leaves alone, our goatlike qivi-curvi-capricornus sheds down ideal for a nest. Song-birds find qiviut best. Suppose you had a bag of it; you could spin a pound into a twenty-four-or-five- mile thread—one, forty-ply— that will not shrink in any dye. If you fear that you are reading an advertisement, you are. If we can’t be cordial to these creatures’ fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.

O imagnifico, wizard in words—poet, was it,
as Alfredo Panzini defined you?
Weren’t you refracting just now on my eye’s
half-closed triptych the image, enhanced, of a glen—
“the foxgrape festoon as sere leaves fell”
on the sand-pale dark byroad...

TO A GIRAFFE
If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal
to be personal and undesirable
to be literal—detrimental as well
if the eye is not innocent-does it mean that
one can live only on top leaves that are small
reachable only by a beast that is tall?—
of which the giraffe is the best example—
the unconversational animal.
When plagued by the psychological,
a creature can be unbearable
that could have been irresistible;
or to be exact, exceptional
since less conversational
than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal.
After all
consolations of the metaphysical
can be profound. In Homer, existence
is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
“the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual.”

TO VICTOR HUGO OF MY CROW PLUTO
“Even when the bird is walking we know that it has wings.”—VICTOR HUGO
Of:
my crow
Pluto,
the true
Plato,
azzurronegro
green-blue rainbow
— Victor Hugo, it is true
we know that the crow
“has wings,” however pigeon-toe-
inturned on grass.
We do. (adagio)
Vivorosso
“corvo,”
although
con dizionario
io parlo
Italiano—
this pseudo
Esperanto
which, savio
ucello
you speak too
— my vow and motto
(botto e totto)
io giuro
è questo
credo:
lucro
è peso morto.
And so
dear crow—
gioièllo
mio— I have to
let you go;
a bel bosco
generoso,
tuttuto vagabondo, s
erafino uvaceo
Sunto,
oltremarino
verecondo
Plato, addio.

(((((Impromptu equivalents for esperanto madinusa (made in U.S.A.) for those who might not resent them. azzurro-negro: blue-black vivorosso: lively con dizionario: with dictionary savio ucello: knowing bird botto e totto: vow and motto io giuro: I swear è questo credo: is this credo lucro è peso morto: profit is a dead weight gioièllo mio: my jewel a bel bosco: to lovely woods tuttuto vagabondo: complete gypsy serafino uvaceo: grape-black seraph sunto: in short verecondo: modest))))

[Matthew Wilder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things—obdurate, prickly, overly available to the eye—and words—endlessly sensuous, sticky, seductive—change places, maybe change ontological categories, in a PERSONA/MULHOLLAND DRIVE/3 WOMEN kinda way. They become coterminous, they co-be. Yet Marianne’s poems attain no more transcendental quality than an elderly Yankee woman’s laundry list. Which, of course, they are.

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lo mejor que he leído en bastante. Marianne es sublime, demasiado elegante para cualquiera. Indigna quien la siga, indigno quien procure precederla, Marianne es única: un faro de huesos en la poesía gringa del siglo xx y ,por qué no, de todo el mundo.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Those various scalpels,
those
various sounds consistently indistinct, like intermingled echoes
struck from thin glasses successively at random --
the inflection disguised: your hair, the tails of two
fighting-cocks head to head in stone --
like sculptured scimitars repeating the curve of your ears in reverse order...

What does this mean? Does this mean something? This doesn't mean anything... Does it?

[Cassandra Glissadevil · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars!

Black in blazonry means
prudence; and niger, unpropitious. Might
hematite—
black, compactly incurved horns on bison
have significance? The
soot-brown tail-tuft on
a kind of lion ...
-Marianne Moore

Moore's poems delight the ear with precise diction, opaline perfection, wit, and cheerful insights of an Earth...alive! Marianne Moore wove a vast verbal tapestry of science, nature, and art.

China's current Corona virus culprit, (The Pangolin) reminded me of Marianne Moore's poem of the same name. The calibre of Marianne Moore's Complete Poems sustains a resplendent quality throughout. Highly recommended!

The Pangolin

Another armored animal–scale
lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
tail row! This near artichoke with head and legs and
grit-equipped gizzard,
the night miniature artist engineer is,
yes, Leonardo da Vinci’s replica–
impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
Armor seems extra. But for him,
the closing ear-ridge–
or bare ear licking even this small
eminence and similarly safe
contracting nose and eye apertures
impenetrably closable, are not;–a true ant-eater,
not cockroach-eater, who endures
exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night,
returning before sunrise; stepping in the moonlight,
on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside
edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the
claws
for digging. Serpentined about
the tree, he draws
away from danger unpugnaciously,
with no sound but a harmless hiss; keeping
the fragile grace of the Thomas-
of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron
vine, or
rolls himself into a ball that has
power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat
head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in feet.
Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest
of rocks closed with earth from inside, which he can
thus darken.
Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
each with a splendor
which man in all his vileness cannot
set aside; each with an excellence!
"Fearful yet to be feared," the armored
ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but
engulfs what he can, the flattered sword-
edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg-and
body-plates
quivering violently when it retaliates
and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill
on the hat-brim of Gargallo’s hollow iron head of a
matador, he will drop and will
then walk away
unhurt, although if unintruded on,
he cautiously works down the tree, helped
by his tail. The giant-pangolin-
tail, graceful tool, as prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like
an elephant’s trunk with special skin,
is not lost on this ant-and stone-swallowing uninjurable
artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable
whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done
so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between
dusk and day they have the not unchain-like machine-like
form and frictionless creep of a thing
made graceful by adversities, con-
versities. To explain grace requires
a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever,
why would those who graced the spires
with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious
low stone seats–a monk and monk and monk–between the
thus
ingenious roof-supports, have slaved to confuse
grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a
debt,
the cure for sins, a graceful use
of what are yet
approved stone mullions branching out across
the perpendiculars? A sailboat
was the first machine. Pangolins, made
for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,
on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,
with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon,
man slaving
to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth
having,
needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;
a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,
like the ant; spidering a length
of web from bluffs
above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked
like to pangolin; capsizing in
disheartenment. Bedizened or stark
naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-
master to this world, griffons a dark
"Like does not like like that is obnoxious"; and writes error
with four
r’s. Among animals, one has a sense of humor.
Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Uningnorant,
modest and unemotional, and all emotion,
he has everlasting vigor,
power to grow,
though there are few creatures who can make one
breathe faster and make one erecter.
Not afraid of anything is he,
and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle
at every step. Consistent with the
formula–warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few
hairs–that
is a mammal; there he sits in his own habitat,
serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always
curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work
partly done,
says to the alternating blaze,
"Again the sun!
anew each day; and new and new and new,
that comes into and steadies my soul."

-Marianne Moore

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me 10 years (!!!!!) to get through this collection (ha!). Ms Moore def warrants praise for her nature poetry. It was refreshing to read poetry centered in/on one ordinary "thing" blown up & getting a metaphysical glow up. I also learned like what a pagolin is & her one poem about a tiger was ghastly good & I also know more about bisons versus muskoxen (& quiviut). I do not think I have EVER encountered a poet who uses consonance so much! To understand some of her poems, I needed to read them aloud, and many lines & stanzas felt like a combo-tongue-twister-meets-Getman. Her intellect is evident, and her humor is dry. She uses language of the time, so many of my students would throw the towel in on her quickly; however, she is never crass and her philosophy clearly honors equality & respect for life. She has little time for hypocrisies. It is almost jarring to read Modernist poetry after reading mostly contemporary poetry. Overall, I feel
accomplished I finally finished! 🤣

[Alia Shaukat · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favorite poet ever, i can & will read her again and again and always find something new to be amazed by <3

the biology, the syllabics, the ‘genuine’ !!!!!! this woman is my idol

[Fredore Praltsa]

No one does it like her. Wry observation allows her to share social critique without scorn or affectation. Sometimes the form of her observation (she inserts quotes from and references various sources, some obscure, in her poems; her language is very concentrated) makes things too opaque to be pleasurable. But her interest in what, exactly, a particular phenomena might reveal about broader social truth (or how it might prove what she sees broader social truth to be) makes things entertaining.

For example, about a cat:

When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.

Or about human-snake relations:

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best.

Or about "novices":

Because one expresses oneself and entitles it wisdom, one is not
a fool. What an idea!

Or about the children's book The Tailor of Gloucester (yes, exactly):

where might there be a refuge for me
from egocentricity
and its propensity to bisect,
mis-state, misunderstand
and obliterate continuity?

& so on:

One detects creative power by its capacity to conquer one's detachment.

&:

The means must not defeat the end.

&, my favorite:

Omissions are not accidents.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Poetry

I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one dis-
covers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.”

*

“The word France means
enfranchisement; means one who can
'animate whoever thinks of her.'”

from “Light Is Speech”

*

Hello dear readers!

I picked this one out as my “bathroom book” that I would let sit in the bathroom eschewing the need to always remember to take a book in with me; however, since then I've decided to give up on the idea of a bathroom book because it really isn't ever enough time to read as much as I would like. These poems actually worked out well according to the periods of time I spent in the bathroom, but I finally got to a point where I wasn't moving through the book quickly enough and wanted to finish things so I liberated the tome from the bathroom and did just that. So there's an update on my mundane reading habits. Anyway!

I found this volume at a garage sale in Astoria, OR. It was probably about a few months after I had read the stuff on WCW and had heard Moore mentioned and at around the same time was introduced to her poem “The Fish” by a poetry friend-now lost to the ages I'm afraid! (atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale). The seller up-charged me on it. Turns out this book isn't worth much at all, not that that matters. I wanted to read a nice collection of Moore's and here it was, presenting itself to me—what's seven bucks anyway?

So I brought it back from Oregon. I had been mightily impressed by “The Fish” which is really just a superb poem. But I also wanted to hear a woman poet's take on the period of American life I had gotten an earful from WCW about. Moore was influenced by imagists like Williams and more broadly she embodies the embracing of free verse so common in 20th century modernist American poets. She most often organizes her poetry around syllables and many of her poems indent lines to illustrate the syllabic scheme of her stanzas. Sometimes this makes for disjointed reading especially if one does not fall into the natural rhythm of each poem. Yet, to be generous, more often the rhythm is easy enough to grasp and either the diction, content, or deft use of figures of speech compensates. Now when that stuff doesn't compensate, her poetry gets a bit boring. Some poems the rhythm didn't capture me, on others I didn't quite grasp the social commentary if there were any. Early on in the collection I had the thought, “Well her poetry's pretty good when she isn't going on about some exotic reptile.” She does those exotic animals pretty well though. And, really, how many poets spin some fine words on pangolins, paper nautiluses, jerboas, frigate pelicans, and the like? For me Moore's all about the diction and wordplay, however.

So what then? Well, This is one collection where there are a handful of very excellent poems and the rest just sort of tap out the same tune in between. I wasn't super impressed by it as a whole, but some of her poems are too compelling to ignore as singular pieces. I've mentioned “The Fish,” alongside it is “No Swan So Fine” (excellent), “Poetry,” “In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance Is Good and,” “I May, I Might, I Must,” “Love in America?” (loove this one), “What Are Years?,” “The Student,” and “A Grave.” Check those out if you get a chance. I think her long poems go on a bit too long. I think her voice is a tad too aloof at times, up in the clouds-though in reality I love her manner of contemplating the mere ideas of things. I was a bit put off by the overuse of quotes in some of her poems. She explains that this is part of her process: that she finds some phrase well put and then works it into a broader poem. And I'll admit I do the same thing; the last poem I wrote was organized around a translated phrase from famed Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. But I suppose what I really mean to say then is that I failed to grasp what many of her quotations attempted to mean. While I may have enjoyed them for their place in the euphony of the poem itself, they lacked a certain additional significance that I expected. Perhaps on further contemplation I would divine such things, but I've got too many other books to read!

It was interesting to read a full collection of Moore's (which this itself is an overview of her poetic periods-although I found it pretty cohesive as a whole), especially in light of WCW. There's some definite influence there, but also stark difference. Some her phrasing reminds me of Cummings too. In sum WCW is a committed imagist, while Moore is more traditional in a modernist way, i.e., goodbye meter, hello syllables. And while I'd love to discourse on the state of modernist poetry in the first half of the 20th century in America, I think you get the picture.

So...recommendations...hmm, I think I would recommend some of her poems, but can't speak to a full collection without knowing you've got some sort of American poetry agenda under your belt. So check out those poems I mentioned if any of this sounds like good poetry to you. I suppose the other thing is her gender, which I'd like to read other women poets from the 20th century. She's an exemplary figure in that regard.

And, since I can't resist, here's “Love in America?” which beat out “The Fish” and “No Swan So Fine” for my favorite:

Love in America?

Whatever it is, it's a passion—
a benign dementia that should be
engulfing American, fed in a way
the opposite of the way
in which the Minotaur was fed.
It's a Midas of tenderness;
from the heart;
nothing else. From one with ability
to bear being misunderstood—
take the blame, with “nobility
that is action,” identifying itself with
pioneer unperfunctoriness

without brazenness or
bigness of overgrown
undergrown shallowness.

Whatever it is, let it be without
affectation.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

~

I suppose I'm still a romantic at heart here. I love hearing her wax on what love is. And to reference Greek myth while operating under its presuppositions of the madness of love, to summon misunderstanding, blame, and nobility, to pair the “bigness of overgrown” with “undergrown shallowness”—Moore clearly is a very capable poet. The last 3 lines won my heart, shard of flint though it be.

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly read and thoroughly enjoyed; an excellent way to while away National Poetry Month! I had already determined that Marianne Moore would be the favorite poet of a character in my novel-in-progress, so I read this for research in addition to edification. Moore's exquisite poem "What Are Years" is an integral fit for the themes of Grandpa Art.

WHAT ARE YEARS

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt –
dumbly calling, deafly listening – that
is misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.