Becoming Marianne Moore: Early Poems, 1907-1924

by Marianne Moore, Robin G. Schulze (Editor)

Throughout her lifetime, Marianne Moore was an avid editor of her own verse. The bulk of her poems appear in numerous, at times vastly different published versions. For Moore, no text was ever stable or finished; each opportunity to publish offered an opportunity to revise. Becoming Marianne Moore gives scholars and readers access to the multiple variant versions of Moore's poems published between 1907 and 1924. An innovative, deeply contextualized facsimile edition of the poet's published early verse, it brilliantly demonstrates that modernist textuality is not a fixed, static product but an ongoing, fluid process.

Becoming Marianne Moore offers readers a full facsimile reprint of the first edition of Observations (1924), the book that garnered Moore the Dial Award for Literature and solidified her reputation as a modernist poet of note. The reprint is followed by a collection of facsimiles that presents each of Moore's poems published between 1907 and 1924 as it first appeared in a modernist little magazine. Each facsimile is accompanied by a variorum table that gives scholars quick access to all of the published changes that Moore made to each poem and a series of brief bibliographical notes that supply information about the immediate publication contexts of all of the presentations of the poem. These notes, in turn, point readers to narrative accounts of Moore's associations with her early publishers that offer a range of historical, contextual, biographical, and bibliographic information about the publication events of Moore's poems and explore her attempts to shape her literary career in concert with some of her most famous modernist peers--Richard Aldington, H.D., Harriet Monroe, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams.

A wonderful fusion of historical research and critical sensitivity, Becoming Marianne Moore will change the way people think about Moore's verse and modernist textuality in general. A powerful intervention into Moore studies, it gives readers a broader sense of the poet's complex and brilliant career.

Genres: Poetry

600 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2002

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

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm presuming that like myself most casual fans of Moore are generally unaware of the issues surrounding the access and availability of this great Modernist's poetry: a relentless and scrupulous revisor, Moore reworked and re-published many of her poems throughout her long life, and so any given poem, even her most famous, often have multiple versions. Which is all fine and good, and in the end, perhaps not all that unique of a situation either.

The major point of contention, however, is that in the majority of the time Moore wanted her latest revisions be considered the final expression of her authorial intention, and as such, the only major collection of her work continuously in print, Complete Poems, represent the last revisions she was able to complete before her death in 1972. The potential problem of this situation, however, is that her final revisions are often radically different than earlier versions—an anthology I used this last semester included both the 1921 and 1967 versions of "Poetry," the former a (beautiful and eloquent) 30 lines; the latter, however, is solely comprised of the first three lines of the 1921 version. And so a curious situation was created: one of Modernism's great poets was often read, judged and enjoyed not for the poems that made her famous in the 1920's and 30's, but for the poems as she "saw" them at the end of her life in the 60's and 70's.

Which might not be an issue for some, but if you wished to have a sense of Moore's poetry in historical context, the situation quickly becomes a labyrinthine nightmare—what if, say, you interpret a poem as a response to a 1920's event, and then come to find out later that the most important content supporting that reading wasn't actually part of the poem until some four decades after the fact? Not that it was easy to check if this was the case, for Moore's niece and literary executor held to her aunt's wishes and wouldn't allow for earlier editions of poems to be reprinted.

Enter Becoming Marianne Moore, meant to both honor Moore's final wishes and make her earlier versions and revisions widely available. Not the biography the title makes it sound like, this is instead a large collection of facsimile copies of Moore's early publications, and all scrupulously annotated and organized by its editor Robin G. Schulze. It's a wondrous, fascinating volume, to say nothing of its historical value. Problem is it's a big reference book instead of an accessible and readable collection—but hey, something is better than nothing, right?

[sam °❀⋆.ೃ࿔* · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliantly constructed archive of Moore finding her written voice at the age of 32,
has induced enormous amounts of my affection as i take Marianne to be my parasocial gf

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I take the New Historicist point here -- the textual methods based on Jerome McGann's "imaginative literalism" -- so that, e.g., we get Moore's 1924 Dial Observations, photographical reproductions of each page, along with the H.D./Bryher English samizdat Poems seemingly done without Moore's approval or knowledge, in the notes and variants. We also get the first little magazine publications, often bowdlerized. The point being, it took some effort, including by Moore, to become her authorial self, to which the book wants to act as crib. Having the "fine" (in Moore-speak, "original") Observations is about all of the tendentiousness I require. But I'll accept highly academic expositions of little magazine culture as the cost, as it were. God knows the scholar has kept her hands clean of making any claim for Moore's greatness, let alone her significance.

[Georgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

very good especially from an editorial standpoint. only wish the corresponding page numbers for the other presentations had been on each page of Observations!

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A facsmile edition of all of Marianne Moore's early poetry publications, including her Dial Press book Observations, one of the greatest books of poetry of the twentieth century—and an unread book for many years because of Moore's revisions and deletions. Scrupulously edited by Robin Schulze. This book is unfortunately very expensive, but absolutely essential for anyone who cares about modernist poetry.

[Denise M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great female poet... inspiring for female writers.