greatpoetry | Entries tagged with marianne moore

The Icosasphere by Marianne Moore

“In Buckinghamshire hedgerows
the birds nesting in the merged green density,
weave little bits of string and moths and feathers and
thistledown,
in parabolic concentric curves" and,
working for concavity, leave spherical feats of rare efficiency;
whereas through lack of integration,

avid for someone's fortune,
three were slain and ten committed perjury,
six died, two killed themselves, and two paid fines for
risks they'd run.
But then there is the icosasphere
in which at last we have steel-cutting at its summit of economy,
since twenty triangles conjoined, can wrap one

ball or double-rounded shell
with almost no waste, so geometrically
neat, it's an icosahedron. Would the engineers making one,
or Mr. J. O. Jackson tell us
how the Egyptians could have set up seventy-eight-foot solid
granite vertically?
We should like to know how that was done.

rorylareina.livejournal.com

Love In America—

Whatever it is, it's a passion—
a benign dementia that should be
engulfing America, fed in a way
   the opposite of the way
in which the Minotaur was fed.
It's a Midas of tenderness;
   from the heart;
nothing else. From one with ability
to bear being misunderstood—
   take the blame, with "nobility
   that is action," identifying itself with
   pioneer unperfunctoriness

   without brazenness or
   bigness of overgrown
   undergrown shallowness.

Whatever it is, let it be without
   affectation.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

rymenhild.livejournal.com

Trying to open locked doors with a sword, threading
   the points of needles, planting shade trees
   upside down; swallowed by the opaqueness of one whom the seas

love better than they love you, Ireland--

you have lived and lived on every kind of shortage.
   You have been compelled by hags to spin
   gold thread from straw and have heard men say:
"There is a feminine temperament in direct contrast to ours,

which makes her do these things.  Circumscribed by a
   heritage of blindness and native
   incompetence, she will become wise and will be forced to give in.
Compelled by experience, she will turn back;

water seeks its own level":
   and you have smiled. "Water in motion is far
   from level." You have seen it, when obstacles happened to bar
the path, rise automatically.

    ~Marianne Moore

jastenreadsmuch.livejournal.com

THE FISH

wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
    opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
    there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices—
    in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
    of bodies. The water drives a wedge
    of iron through the iron edge
        of the cliff; whereupon the stars

pink
rice-grains, ink-
    bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like green
    lilies, and submarine
        toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
    marks of abuse are present on this
    defiant edifice—
        all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
    of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
    hatchet strokes, these things stand
        out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
    evidence has proved that it can live
    on what can not revive
        its youth. The sea grows old in it.

spiritualorchid.livejournal.com

or what is closer to the truth,
when I look at that of which I may regard myself as the imaginary possessor,
I fix upon what would give me pleasure in my average moments:
the satire upon curiousity in which no more is discernible
than the intensity of the mood;
or quite the opposite - the old thing, the medieval decorated hatbox,
in which there are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hourglass,
and deer and birds and seated people;
it may be no more than a square of parquestry; the literal biography perhaps,
in letters standing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
an artichoke in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hieroglyphic in three parts;
the silver fence protecting Adam's grave, or Michael taking Adam by the wrist.
Too stern an intellectual emphasis upon this quality or that detracts from one's enjoyment.
It must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the approved triumph easily be honored -
that which is great because something else is small.
It comes to this: of whatever sort it is,
it must be "Lit with piercing glances into the life of things";
it must acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it.

Marianne Moore, When I Buy Pictures

forthegenuine.livejournal.com

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt,—
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accededs to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

—Marianne Moore

wegrownumb.livejournal.com

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 )

wilma-dean.livejournal.com

No Swan So Fine - Marianne Moore

"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as chintz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.

Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea-urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers–at ease and tall. The king is dead.

redheartleaf.livejournal.com

Silence

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.

Moore, Marianne. 1924. Observations.

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was an American poet known for the moral and intellectual insights her work achieved while maintaining an accurate and objective perspective. Her devotion to writing earned her acclaim and support by both colleagues and critics.

Moore's first book of poetry, Poems, was published in London in 1921, followed three years later by Observations. These early poems, including "Silence" above, contained many arresting images and thoughts that crystallized at the end of the poem into a conclusion that was powerful, yet familiar -- perhaps due to a feeling of nostalgia.

In 1925, she became acting editor of The Dial, a renowned American journal of literature and the arts. Her collected poems were published in 1951.

c-quilty.livejournal.com

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

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with marianne moore

"The Icosasphere" by Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

Sojourn in the Whale

The Fish - Marianne Moore

When I Buy Pictures

What Are Years?

"Poetry" by Marianne Moore

No Swan So Fine

(no subject)