Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was an American poet, critic and a member of the Modernist movement. She is renowned for her wit, linguistic precision and zoological poems.

Marianne Moore: biography

Marianne Moore was born in Missouri in 1887. Her parents separated before her birth, which left her mother in a situation considered less than ideal in 19th century Midwestern America. Her mother initially raised her and her brother in her Presbyterian minister grandfather’s home. They later moved to the more industrial Pennsylvania after his death in 1894. There her mother became a schoolteacher to support her family.

In 1905, Moore enrolled in Bryn Mawr College, a private liberal arts university for women. She graduated in 1909, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, politics, and economics. This was an unusual achievement for a woman of her time, with only 5,237 American women earning a bachelor's degree in 1900.¹ It was at Bryn Mawr that her first short stories and the poem, 'A Jellyfish' (1909), were published.

At Bryn, she was an open supporter of the Suffragette movement and a member of the National College Equal Suffrage League. After her possible attendance at the 1913 march in Washington DC, she continued writing supporting the suffrage movement but under a pseudonym.

Following her degree, she studied typing at Carlisle Commercial College, as secretarial work was a popular occupation for women of her era. After working as a typist and then a schoolteacher at the Carlisle Indian School, Moore moved to New York City with her mother. Initially working as an assistant at the New York Public Library, she began to get published in the literary magazine, the Dial. Through the magazine and her college contemporary, H.D. she met other Imagist poets like William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Her work was also published alongside Ezra Pound in the English publication, Egoist.

Moore's first book of poems, Poems (1921) was published for her by the Imagist poet H.D. and launched her literary career. Her popular second collection, Observations was published in 1924 and won the Dial Award. By 1925, she had become the Editor of Dial, where she worked until 1929. Moore was a hugely popular poet in her time. She won numerous awards, from the Bollingen Prize (1953) to the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for her collection, Collected Poems (1951). In addition, along with Carlos Williams, she encouraged a new generation of poets like Allen Ginsberg and Elizabeth Bishop.

Moore’s poetry is characterised by her interest in the animal kingdom, wit, irony and linguistic precision. A writer of broad interests, she also wrote prose, literary criticism essays, her (rejected) name suggestions for Ford cars and the liner notes for Muhammed Ali’s spoken word album, 'I am the Greatest' (1963). In the days before MP4s and streaming, liner notes were the words written on LPs and the inside sleeves of CD covers. Fairly unusually for a poet, she was also a lover of sports, from boxing to baseball.

Marianne Moore: death

After a series of strokes, Marianne Moore died a much-beloved American poet in New York City in 1972. Her will established a fund for Prospect Park’s Amperdown Elm tree. Following her death, Moore was inducted into The New York State Writers Hall of Fame (2012). Her living room and study are preserved in their original entirety by The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. Visitors can view her library and random objects like her favourite baseball, signed by the legendary Mickey Mantel.

Marianne Moore by George Platt Lynes.

Marianne Moore: writing style

Marianne Moore’s poetic style is broadly characterised by precision and conciseness that manages to convey meaning beyond its deceptive simplicity. Carlos Williams said that her early works evoked:

Thematically, she often wrote about rare or unusual animals and nature. This zoological approach was developed while she was still in college and continued throughout her career.

Structurally, Moore wrote in free verse without set rhyme schemes or meter but made extensive use of syllabic verse. She used a set number of syllables to structure her stanzas to create a precision of rhythm and tempo to match her words.

As far as poetic devices were concerned, Moore typically used subtle rhyme styles such as slant rhymes rather than set rhyme schemes. To create a sense of flow, she also interspersed enjambment with carefully constructed punctuation. She frequently directly quoted philosophers and other poets in her poems, creating a type of intertextuality well before the Postmodernist movement decided to make this ancient technique a modern characteristic. This also reflects a modesty that is rare in well-known poets, who usually do not directly quote others in their works.

Of her work, she has said:

Marianne Moore: poetry

Moore’s poetry is considered part of the modern American canon. Many of her popular works are written about animals but she also wrote about abstract themes of philosophy. Let's take a look at a few.

Marianne Moore: 'To a Snail' (1924)

Thematically the poem, 'To a Snail' is about the attributes, both real and imaginary, of a snail and their relation to poetic aesthetics. Structurally, the poem is a subverted blason written in free verse. It is pretty short at just twelve lines over one stanza. It also follows the characteristic syllabic verse approach of all of Moore’s poems.

Moore uses her usual quotation style, directly quoting phrases whose origins are difficult to pinpoint as they have been re-quoted with edits or paraphrased many times over the centuries.

Marianne Moore: 'What are Years?'

This is one of Moore’s most famous and widely read poems. Published in 1941, the poem is about human mortality, misfortune, courage and the difference between good and evil. These themes are more surface level and therefore more accessible than many of her other poems.

Thematically, the first stanza asks age-old philosophical questions about the nature of innocence and guilt, unfair misfortune and death, as well as courage and how we can find it.

The answers are delivered in stanzas two to three. Moore, interestingly considering her Presbyterian background and beliefs, mentions that mortality is to be embraced and accepted. She suggests that mere satisfaction is lowly while finding joy, despite the inevitable earthly end, is the ideal.

Structurally, the poem is also syllabic, free verse over three stanzas.

'What are the Years?' features the 'sea in a chasm' symbolism.

Marianne Moore: Complete Poems

Moore published her heavily self-edited collection, The Complete Poems in 1967. In this update, many of her previously published poems were rearranged, reformatted and pruned. The poem 'Poetry' was infamously edited from the 1919 version of 30 lines and five stanzas to the 1932 version’s three stanzas. Moore further edited it down to a poem of just three lines in 1967.

Critics and readers were dismayed and there is still much debate about which version is the one with authority. In practice, the editing merely aligned with Moore’s philosophy of conciseness detailed in her poem, 'To a Snail'. As she wrote: