MOORE, Marianne (Craig)

Born 15 November 1887, Kirkwood, Missouri; died 5 February 1972, New York, New York

Daughter of John Milton and Mary Warner Moore

Marianne Moore was raised by her mother and grandfather, a Presbyterian minister. She was seven when her grandfather died, and her mother moved the two children to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She became an English teacher in the Metzger Institute, where she was educated before entering Bryn Mawr College (B.A., 1909). In college, Moore specialized in biology and histology, but also submitted poetry to the campus literary magazine. For four years after graduating from the Carlisle Commercial College in 1910, Moore taught stenography, typing, and bookkeeping at the U.S. Indian School in Carlisle.

Moore's publishing career began in 1915 when the Egoist, a London journal dedicated to the new Imagist movement in poetry, accepted "To the Soul of Progress," a short satire on war. The same year, Poetry published Moore for the first time in a U.S. magazine of general circulation. In Greenwich Village, where Moore lived with her mother, she became part of a literary group that included poets William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Alfred Krembourg. Poems (1921) was published without Moore's knowledge by her admirers in England. She added several poems, including the long Marriage (issued first as a pamphlet in 1923), before the collection was published in the U.S. as Observations (1924). It won the $2,000 Dial Award for "distinguished service to American letters," and Moore was asked to become acting editor of the Dial, where she worked from 1926 until the magazine ceased publication in 1929. Thereafter her vocation was solely poetry and writing. Moore was the recipient of many honorary degrees and awards, including the Bollingen and Pulitzer prizes for her Collected Poems (1951). In 1955 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Observations shows clearly Moore's celebrated innovations in prosody, formal structuring of verse, and poetic vision of animals and of man. In "The Fish," Moore's sharp powers of close observation enable her to render vividly the world of the ocean. That poem also reveals Moore's intense interest in design and pattern, indicated by the distinctive forms of typography, and her new emphasis on the whole stanza as a formal unit, rather than on the line. In the first few lines of "Poetry," Moore tells us she, too, dislikes poetry, but that by reading it, one may discover "the genuine." This poem includes Moore's famous description of poetry as seeing real toads in imaginary gardens.

In his introduction to Moore's Selected Poems (1935), T. S. Eliot linked her with the Imagist poets, yet pointed out unique characteristics of her work. He acknowledged her as the greatest master of light rhyme, admiring her intricate forms and patterns. Eliot recognized Moore's work as being part of a small number of durable poems from our time.

In "The Mind Is an Enchanted Thing" (from Nevertheless, 1944, reissued 1983), Moore argues, through her own intricate form of syllabics, that contemplation of art has the power to transform spiritual dejection into spiritual joy. The most emotional of all Moore's poems is "In Distrust of Merits." It has been called the best poem to come out of World War II; the theme is the tragedy of war, and the poem reflects Moore's profound hope that contagion, so effective in sickness, may also become effective in creating trust.

Moore's major scholarly work, on which she spent nine years, is a translation of the fables of La Fontaine (1954). The fables are all slyly satirical and entertaining in their striking wisdom and new typographical forms. Moore's criticism, collected in Predilections (1955), is eclectic; her topics include Louise Bogan, D. H. Lawrence, Sir Francis Bacon, Ezra Pound, Henry James, and Anna Pavlova. She also wrote a play, The Absentee: A Comedy in Four Acts (1962), based on the 1812 Irish novel by Maria Edgeworth. Moore's most popular book, A Marianne Moore Reader (1961), includes selections from her best prose and poems.

Moore's primary literary contribution is the development of the artful flexibility of direct language in poems. She is remembered as a genius of invention in poetry, for humane wit and intellectual energy, and as a loved and gracious literary artist.

Other Works:

The Pangolin, and Other Verse (1936). What Are Years (1941). A Face (1949). The Fables of La Fontaine (translated by Moore, 1954). Gedichte (1954). Like a Bulwark (1956). Idiosyncrasy & Technique: Two Lectures (1958). Letters from and to the Ford Motor Company (1958). O to Be a Dragon (1959).

The Arctic Ox (1964). Poetry and Criticism (1965). Tell Me, Tell Me; Granite, Steel, and Other Topics (1966). The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1967, 1972). The Accented Syllable (1969). Marianne Moore's First Poem (1972). Unfinished Poems (1972). Marianne Moore: Letters to Hildegarde Watson, 1933-1964 (1976). Alyse Gregory Remembered (1981). Answers to Some Questions Posed by Howard Nemerov (1982). Nevertheless (1983). The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (edited by P. C. Willis, 1987). Complete Poems (1994). Selected Letters of Marianne Moore (1998).

Bibliography:

August, B. T., The Poetic Use of Womanhood in Five Modern American Poets: Moore, Millay, Rukeyser, Levertov, and Plath (1995). Ciugureanu, A., High Modernist Poetic Discourse: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens (1997). Engle, B. F., Marianne Moore (1964, 1989). Garrigue, J., Marianne Moore (1965). Goodridge, C., Hints and Disguises: Marianne Moore and Her Contemporaries (1989). Hall, D., Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal (1970). Holley, M., The Poetry of Marianne Moore: A Study in Voice and Value (1987). Joyce, E. W., Cultural Critique and Abstraction: Marianne Moore and the Avant-Garde (1998). Kineke, S. A., Prefacing Modernism: The Marketing and Mentoring of Women Writers in the Early 20th Century (dissertation, 1996). Leavell, L., Marianne Moore and the Visual Arts: Prismatic Color (1995). Magill, F. N., Great Women Writers: The Lives and Works of 135 of the World's Most Important Women Writers, From Antiquity to the Present (1994). Martin, T., Marianne Moore: Subversive Modernist (1986). Nitchie, G. W., Marianne Moore: An Introduction to the Poetry (1969). Miller, C., Marianne Moore: Questions of Authority (1995). Molesworth, C., Marianne Moore: A Literary Life (1990). Page, D., Marianne Moore (1994). Parisi, J., ed., Marianne Moore: The Art of a Modernist (1990). Plimpton, G., ed., Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1998). Schulze, R. G., The Web of Friendship: Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens (1995). Schulman, G., Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement (1986). Sheehy, E. P., and K. A. Lohf, The Achievement of Marianne Moore: A Bibliography, 1907-1957 (1958). Slatin, J., The Savage's Romance: The Poetry of Marianne Moore (1986). Stamy, C., Marianne Moore and China: Orientalism and a Writing of America (1999). Teter, S. W., "Collaboration and Commitment: A Study of Marianne Moore's Career as Poet and Daughter" (thesis, 1998). Tomlinson, C., ed., Marianne Moore: A Collection of Critical Essays (1969). Watts, E. S., The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945 (1977). Willis, P. C., Marianne Moore: Woman and Poet (1990).

Reference works:

CA (1973) CB (Dec. 1952, April 1968). Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995). TCA, TCAS

Other references:

American Book Review (Oct. 1992). Harper's (May 1977). Journal of Modern Literature (1997). London Review of Books (1998). Modern Philology (1997). New England Quarterly (June 1993). NYRB (Nov. 1997). NYTBR (Nov. 1997). Parnassus (1991). Quarterly Review of Literature (1948, 1969).

—ROBIN JOHNSON