Tess Gallagher (Essay Date 1985)

SOURCE: Gallagher, Tess. "Throwing the Scarecrows from the Garden." Parnassus 12, no. 2 (1985): 45-60.

In the following essay, Gallagher outlines and counters the negative critical reaction—particularly from feminist commentators—to Moore's poetry.

In 1970 when I began to read Marianne Moore in a class with the poet Jean Garrigue, I was determined not to like Moore's poems. But they were on the menu and I allowed my nose to be pressed into the plate—not by Ms. Garrigue, who was the gentlest of teachers, but by the poems themselves. I resented what I took to be their holier-than-thou, near Olympian chill, the lack of visible emotion, the magpie clutter, the pert glint in the bird's eye that said I was too dull-witted to ever catch her meaning without a sojourn in the moat. Luckily, this was not to be the lasting impression Moore made...