Marianne Moore Summary

Marianne Moore (1887 - 1972) (Full name Marianne Craig Moore) American poet, essayist, translator, short story writer, editor, playwright, and author of children's books. Marianne Moore: Introd... Read more

Biography EssayMarianne Moore made a new kind of verse, yet she denied that she was a poet. She worked with words: they were her trade. What she wrote was called poetry, she said, because there was no... Read more

Marianne Moore made a new kind of verse, yet she denied that she was a poet. She worked with words: they were her trade. What she wrote was called poetry, she said, because there was no other category... Read more

In the following essay, Garrigue provides an assessment of the poetry and career of Marianne Moore. We know this poet by her voice, by her “astonishing invention in a single mode,” by he... Read more

In the following essay, Holley provides an overview of poems written during the first several years of Moore's post-college career. The seven years between her graduation in 1909 and her move i... Read more

In the following essay, Engel offers a critical overview of the poetry produced by Moore from the late 1950s through the publication of “Prevalent at One Time” in the fall of 1970, the l... Read more

In the following essay, Erickson offers an introduction to Moore's poetry, focusing in particular on a sense of magic and imagination inherent in the poet's work.    ... Read more

In the following essay, Heuving contrasts specific examples of Moore's poetry with thematically similar poems by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Some feminine poets of the... Read more

Critical Essay by Stanley Kunitz Miss Moore is unique, and she never argues. Like peace she is indivisible, and of her verse it can be said that nothing resembles it so much as her prose. Not the leas... Read more

Critical Essay by Cleanth Brooks [The] soundest account of the general function which Miss Moore's birds and beasts perform in her poetry [is that] they provide the perspective through which to... Read more

Critical Essay by Pamela White Hadas Throughout my study of Marianne Moore's poetry I have found myself coming back again and again to two particularly intriguing questions that are intimately ... Read more

Critical Essay by R. P. Blackmur In Miss Moore's work inverted commas are made to perform significantly and notably and with a fresh nicety which is part of her contribution to the language. Be... Read more

Critical Essay by David Hsin-fu Wand Unlike Wallace Stevens who is known to have quoted lines of Chinese poetry in his writing … Marianne Moore never makes direct references to or gives quotati... Read more

Critical Essay by Ezra Pound It is possible, as I have written, or intended to write elsewhere, to divide poetry into three sorts: (1.) melopoeia, to wit, poetry which moves by its music, whether it b... Read more

Critical Essay by Hilton Kramer The career of Marianne Moore … provides us with a perfect example of the way a poet's fame may come in time to obscure the essential quality of the poetry... Read more

Critical Essay by T. S. Eliot The first aspect in which Miss Moore's poetry is likely to strike the reader is that of minute detail rather than that of emotional unity. The gift for detailed ob... Read more

Critical Essay by Lloyd Frankenberg The enchanting and enchanted mind defines imagination. And it is her imagination that defines the mind of Marianne Moore; an imagination articulated by fact…... Read more

Critical Essay by Randall Jarrell Miss Moore's prose-seeming, matter-of-factly rhythmed syllabic verse, the odd look most of her poems have on the page (their unusual stanzaic patterns, their w... Read more

Critical Essay by Brad Leithauser It was like [Moore] to infuse the natural world with a sense of human willfulness, and like her also to derive moral sustenance from nature. She took as heroes—... Read more