MARIANNE MOORE

Dear colleges,

This Monday, October 29th, we are presenting Marianne Moore and her "Poetry". Please note that the version of the poem you have in the photocopy brakes the longest lines. Although the poem is written in a free verse, there are planned metrics and a searched rhyme. That’s the reason why we’ve copied the whole poem here bellow:

"Poetry"

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
*****Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
*****it, after all, a place for the genuine.
***********Hands that can grasp, eyes
***********that can dilate, hair that can rise
*****************if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
*****useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible
*****the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
***********do not admire what
***********we cannot understand: the bat
*****************holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
*****a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base-
*****ball fan, the statistician—
***********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,
*****nor till the poets among us can be
***********"literalists of
***********the imagination"—above
*****************insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have
*****it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
*****the raw material of poetry in
***********all its rawness and
***********that which is on the other hand
*****************genuine, you are interested in poetry.

********************************************—Marianne Moore

After having read it, we would like you to think in the following questions. Of course, your answers will always be welcomed and presumably helpful.

1.     Reading the first words, one must realize the irony of the declaration against the poetry, since it is made through a poem. But this sentence is probably not a mere ironic, shocking or comic affirmation, given that appeals to someone who supposedly shares her opinion: “I, too, dislike it [the poetry]”. Could this be an appellation to the reader, who is actually reading poetry? Did you feel identified when you read it for the first time?

2.     The criticism is a main factor of the poem. It seems that the poet is constructing her poetic view by opposition to the poetry she dislikes. Which kind of poetry is the poet referring to? Can we localize textual evidences of that? Does the poem say how the poetry is, or how should it be?

3.     In the third line, poetry is described as “a place for the genuine”. In an interview for “The Paris Review”, in 1967, Moore said she “disliked the term poetry for any but Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s or Dante’s. […] What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category in which to put it”. The terms “place” and “category” are free of aesthetic connotations: do you think they are appropriated to describe poetry?

4.     On the formal analysis, it is clear the use of free verse, the prose-like style, the strange rhyme and rhythm, the unrefined line breaks and the use of common words. What can be the objective or the reason of doing it?

5.     The author published a few versions of this poem. In her Complete Poems, appeared in 1967 (three years before she died), Moore reduced it to three lines:

“Poetry”

I, too, dislike it.
***Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
***it, after all, a place for the genuine.

This was object of a huge amount of criticism: the fans thought the images of the poem were essential. In what sense do you think the short version changes the message of the poem?

Guillem & Pol