Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948

Marianne Moore (December 11, 1887 - February 5, 1972) was a Modernist American poet and writer.

Life

Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, outside of St. Louis, daughter of construction engineer and inventor, John Milton Moore, and his wife, Mary Warner. She grew up in the household of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor, her father having been committed to a mental hospital before her birth. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and graduated four years later. She taught courses at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 1915, when Moore began to professionally publish poetry.

Poetic career

In part because of her extensive European travels before the First World War, Moore came to the attention of poets as diverse as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal The Dial. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry, encouraging promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop and Allen Ginsberg, and publishing, as well as refining poetic technique, early work.

In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from Poetry. Her Collected Poems of 1951 is perhaps her most rewarded work; it earned the poet the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. Moore became a minor celebrity, in New York literary circles, serving as unofficial hostess for the Mayor. She attended boxing matches, baseball games and other public events, dressed in what became her signature garb, a tricorn hat and a black cape. She particularly liked athletics and athletes, and was a great admirer of Muhammad Ali, to whose spoken-word album, I Am the Greatest!, she wrote liner notes. Moore continued to publish poems in various journals, including The Nation, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism. Moore corresponded for a time with W.H. Auden and Ezra Pound during the latter's incarceration.

Edsel consulting

In 1955, Moore was informally invited by Ford's David Wallace, Manager of Marketing Research for Ford's proposed "E" car project and co-worker Bob Young for input and suggestions. Wallace's rationale was "who better to understand the nature of words than a poet."

Moore, a loyal Ford owner, submitted numerous lists which included: "Silver Sword," "Thundercrest" (and "Thundercrester"), "Resilient Bullit," "Intelligent Whale," "Pastelogram," "Adante con Moto" "Varsity Stroke," and "Mongoose Civique." (One name she suggested, "Chaparral", later coincidentally was used for a racing car.) Against the strong objection from her brother, Moore also submitted the name TURCOTINGA, which was a play on the Cotinga (a South American finch) and the color turquoise; however she noted in her letter to Wallace that it was simply a suggestion that if wanted to go in direction of nature, that she had several volumes of works that she could review. In a letter dated December 8th 1955, Moore wrote the following:

Mr Young,

May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP? Do not trouble to answer unless you like it. Marianne Moore

All these outside ideas were rejected, although Miss Moore received two dozen roses and a thank you note affectionately addressed to the Top Turtletop which Moore found amusing. In her reply to Young she regretted that she could not have been more help, and noted that she was looking forward to trying out the vehicle when it was introduced. While Moore's contributions were meant to stir creative thought, and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature, history has greatly exaggerated her relationship to the project.

Later years

Not long after throwing the first pitch for the 1968 season in Yankee Stadium, Moore suffered a stroke. She suffered a series of strokes thereafter, and died in 1972. Moore never married. Moore's living room has been preserved in its original layout in the collections of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. Her entire library, knicknacks (including a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle), all of her correspondence, photographs, and poetry drafts are available for public viewing.

Her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry," in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." It also expressed her idea that poetry is not written in meter, but in more natural forms. She composed hers in syllabics. Robinson Jeffers likewise disavowed meter as a natural part of poetry. Moore went even further than Jeffers, wholly denying meter. These syllabic lines from "Poetry" illustrate her contempt for meter, and other poetic tools:

nor is it valid

to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction

however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry

In 1996 she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Selected works

Poems, 1921. Published in London by H. D. without Moore's knowledge.
Observations, 1924.
Selected Poems, 1935. Introduction by T. S. Eliot.
The Pangolin and Other Verse, 1936.
What Are Years, 1941.
Nevertheless, 1944.
A Face, 1949.
Collected Poems, 1951.
Fables of La Fontaine, 1954. Verse translations of La Fontaine's fables.
Predilections: Literary Essays, 1955.
Idiosyncracy and Technique, 1966.
Like a Bulwark, 1956.
O To Be a Dragon, 1959.
Idiosyncracy and Technique, 1959.
The Marianne Moore Reader, 1961.
The Absentee: A Comedy in Four Acts, 1962. A dramatization of Maria Edgeworth's novel.
Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, 1963. Adaptations from Perrault.
Dress and Kindred Subjects, 1965.
Poetry and Criticism, 1965.
Tell Me, Tell Me: Granite, Steel and Other Topics, 1966.
The Complete Poems, 1967.
The Accented Syllable, 1969.
Homage to Henry James, 1971. Essays by Moore, Edmund Wilson, etc.
The Complete Poems, 1981.
The Complete Prose, 1986.
The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, edited by Bonnie Costello, Celested Goodridge, Cristann Miller. Knopf, 1997.

External links

Credits

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