Holding On Upside Down Quotes

“It is hardly surprising that the wizened, androgynous, admittedly prudish little lady in the tricorne would come to seem irrelevant, even embarrassing, within the youth culture of the late 1960s and '70s.”
― Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

“In the new era of identity politics, Moore became the wrong kind of woman with whom to identify. Little did Rich and her adherents imagine in the 1970s and '80s that the fatherless Moore had been reared by lesbians and educated by feminists.”
― Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

“The poem presents maternal love as a paradox: monstrous on the one hand and "the only fortress strong enough to trust to" on the other.”
― Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

“[The jerboa] survives depravity not by adopting habits of better-known species but by adapting creatively to the unique rigors of its environment. Although Moore's animals do have innately poetic qualities, such as the jerboa's rhythmic leaps, the poems emphasize what she would later identify as her most valuable assets as an artist: persistence and fortitude. Her animal poems are both instructions in the art of survival and acts of survival themselves.”
― Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

“The pluralist understands that truth is various and the pragmatist that it is tentative. The pragmatist gains knowledge not by explaining the universe with a single belief system but by seeking exceptions to one's beliefs and keeping an open mind. As in science, experience expands knowledge without ever revealing truth in its entirety.”
― Linda Leavell, Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore