SOURCE: Erickson, Darlene Williams. “Introduction: The Wizard in Words.” In Illusion Is More Precise Than Precision, pp. 1-13. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992.

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.

                                        O imagnifico, wizard in words—poet, was it, as Alfred Panzini defined you? Weren't you refracting just now on my eye's half-closed triptych                     the image, enhanced, of a glen— 

Marianne Moore, “The Mind, Intractable Thing”

D. H. Lawrence once observed that “it is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. … The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff...