Marianne Moore

[quasimodo1]

To E. E. Cummings - March 5, 1938


Dear Mr. Cummings--blasphemous, inexorable, disrespectful, sinful author though you are--you received a cordial welcome at my door today. I remarked to my mother not long ago, "I wish I could write something that people would regard with the anticipatory confidence with which I hear of any new book by E. E. Cummings." The "Introduction" to this one makes me blush for the moderateness of the above statement. The more I study the equivalences here of "most people's" language, the formidable use of nursery lore, and the further unfortuities,--known to you as technique but never known to lookers-on,--the better, live-er, more undimmed and undiminished they seem. Those who are deaf to the sublime, have to be without it; that is their honorarium. So, no thanks;* in the sense that thanks are too trivial.

Sincerely yours,

* No Thanks was the title of Cummings's 1935 volume
{letter from Marianne Moore to e.e.cumminngs}

[quasimodo1]

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:
your eyes,
flowers of ice and snow


sown by tearing winds on the cordage of disabled ships: your
raised hand
an ambiguous signature: your cheeks, those rosettes
of blood on the stone floors of French châteaux,
with regard to which the guides are so affirmative—
your other hand


a bundle of lances all alike, partly hid by emeralds from Persia
and the fractional magnificence of Florentine
goldwork—a collection of little objects—
sapphires set with emeralds, and pearls with a moonstone, made fine
with enamel in gray, yellow, and dragonfly blue;
a lemon, a pear


and three bunches of grapes, tied with silver: your dress, a magnificent square
cathedral tower of uniform
and at the same time diverse appearance—a
species of vertical vineyard, rustling in the storm
of conventional opinion— ... {excerpt}
Source: The Poems of Marianne Moore (Penguin Books, 2005)

[quasimodo1]

http://www.raintaxi.com/ashbery/roffman.shtml

[quasimodo1]

http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/marianne-moore-2-sized.jpg

[Virgil]

Hey I didn't know you started a thread on Marianne Moore. She's another of my favorites. I never saw that "scapel" poem in post number 2 before. Interesting. I always loved her diction and rhythm. She really had an original voice. T.S. Eliot thought highly of her.

[ktr]

I always loved her diction and rhythm. She really had an original voice. T.S. Eliot thought highly of her.

he also disliked hart crane and thought hamlet was an aesthetic failure. just saying..

[Virgil]

he also disliked hart crane and thought hamlet was an aesthetic failure. just saying..

Hart Crane is so-so. Depends which poems you read. He can be very good, but he can be mediocre. I agree, Hamlet, though a great play, is an aestheitic failure.

The writer Eliot got wrong was D.H. Lawrence. Eliot hated Lawrence and was completely incorrect.

[JBI]

Hart Crane is so-so. Depends which poems you read. He can be very good, but he can be mediocre. I agree, Hamlet, though a great play, is an aestheitic failure.

The writer Eliot got wrong was D.H. Lawrence. Eliot hated Lawrence and was completely incorrect.

He at first didn't care for Milton either, though in Four Quartets he seems to have softened up on his earlier criticisms; the use of epic simile begins to appear at least.

The point is it doesn't matter too much. Some people have problems in taking to heart too much the words of others. For all the gesturing to the "Decline" of reputation of Milton in the first half of the 20th century, or so, I find it hard to actually find evidence that there wasn't Milton reading going on, and Milton close reading occurring.

The same thing can be said about Hamlet, and also Hart Crane; there is always an audience, even if individual critics or figures dislike their work.

The dancing of 810 Confucian disciples on the stage of the Beijing Olympics just over 3 decades after the end of the cultural revolution shows that text and influence, even if suppressed or held in disrepute for a period always seems to bounce back.

Eliot's strong appreciation for Moore shows that he found something of value - it acts as a guideline, and arguably, he was right about it. Still, Eliot's dislike of certain other poets, or works, has proven to be lacking. His dismissal of Spenser, for instance, lost ground when a scholar at Yale proved you can apply the same New Criticism to Spenser as you can Donne.

[quasimodo1]

GEORGE MOORE


In speaking of ‘aspiration,’
From the recesses of a pen more dolorous than blackness
itself,
Were you presenting us with one more form of imperturbable
French drollery,
Or was it self directed banter?
Habitual ennui
Took from you, your invisible, hot helmet of anaemia—
While you were filling your “little glass” from the
decanter
Of a transparent-murky, would-be-truthful “hobohemia”—
And then facetiously
Went off with it? Your soul’s supplanter,
The spirit of good narrative, flatters you, convinced that
in reporting briefly
One choice incident, you have known beauty other than that
of stys, on
Which to fix your admiration.


So far as the future is concerned,
“Shall not one say, with the Russian philosopher,
‘How is one to know what one doesn’t know?’”
So far as the present is concerned,


If external action is effete
And rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as on a recent occasion I was goaded
Into doing, by XY, who was speaking of unrhymed
verse.
This man said—I think that I repeat
His identical words:
“Hebrew poetry is
Prose with a sort of heightened consciousness. ‘Ecstacy
affords http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/MarianneMooreatBrynMahr.jpg
The occasion and expediency determines the form.’”