Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Marianne Moore

Critical Essay by Marianne Moore

[In the main], Doctor Williams' topics are American—crowds at the movies

                  with the closeness and
                  universality of sand,

turkey nests, mushrooms among the fir trees, mist rising from the duck pond, the ball game:

              It is summer, it is the solstice
              the crowd is
 
              cheering, the crowd is laughing

or

    It is spring. Sunshine … dumped among factories
    … down a red dirt path to four goats….
                                            (p. 214)

Essentially not a "repeater of things second-hand," Doctor Williams is in his manner of contemplating with new eyes, old things, shabby things, and other things, a poet. Metre he thinks of as an "essential of the work, one of its words." That which is to some imperceptible, is to him the "milligram of radium" that he values. He is rightly imaginative in not attempting to decide; or rather, in deciding not to attempt to say how wrong these readers are, who find his poems unbeautiful or...
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