As we read ["The Steeple-Jack," in Collected Poems,] we begin to understand that we are not being offered a piece of mere realism: we are participating in the play of imagination over a time and a place. Miss Moore gives us, you will notice, not only the look of things but their sound, smell, and movement; she is rendering her material, as all artists must, through the senses. At the same time her with is in operation; the tone of the poem is light, almost gay, but with an underlying seriousness. This seriousness becomes more and more apparent as the poem proceeds; and soon we are aware that the poet is beginning to draw general inferences from specific facts observed. (pp. 257-58)
Miss Moore, we discover, is playing on the theme of safety versus danger. The town, which looks so neat and stable, depends for its living on the sea, that most unstable of elements. The town is a refuge even for boats—which are repaired in its drydock—but the life of the place depends upon the sea and, therefore, upon danger. In such a place, where so much peace has been attained in spite of continual imminent risk, something must exist which is a guide and a stay to its inhabitants. That something is "hope"; and at the close of the poem a large concept opens out: we are all faced with danger; life itself is dangerous; but danger faced up to and worked with can be made a basis for peace and an ordered daily round, when some spiritual factor is held at the center of life…. The meaning of the poem reverberates in the mind; we feel that we have been led to simplicity through apparent complexity—toward abstract truth through contact with living reality.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Moore, Marianne 1887–1972: Critical Essay by Louise Bogan Access Pass.
