Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Marianne Moore
-
Standard Name: Moore, Marianne
Birth Name: Marianne Craig Moore
MM
was a pivotal figure in US poetry of the twentieth century. A recent editor has written that no major poet is cherished more and known less from that period in America.
Moore, Marianne. “Introduction”. The Poems of Marianne Moore, edited by Grace Schulman, Faber, p. xix - xxx.
xix
As well as poetry, MM
wrote translations, essays, criticism, and personal letters. She had an influential period as editor of the modernist journal the Dial. Her poems are characterised by precise, irregular, unrhymed verse forms and minutely detailed observation, often of semi-mythical animals used as ways of talking about the human condition. Always reluctant to let her work go out of her hands, and often self-deprecating about it, she published few books and let much of her poetry remain in periodicals.
In the month this volume was published, Pound
printed in The Egoist a rollicking article about the outrage Eliot's poetry was producing. Only genius, he wrote, not mere talent, infallibly evokes a torrent of elderly...
Literary responses
T. S. Eliot
Marianne Moore
admired here TSE
's unhoodwinked self-control.
Grant, Michael, editor. T.S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
1: 293
Literary responses
T. S. Eliot
Marianne Moore
discerned in it a mental chronology of evolvement and deepening technique, and two over-riding tendencies: the instinct for order and certitude, and contempt for sham.
Grant, Michael, editor. T.S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
1: 350
Intertextuality and Influence
Maria Edgeworth
Marianne Moore
later dramatised this work.
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Daryush
In 1969 the poet Roy Fuller
, about to lecture on syllabics at Oxford
and planning to centre his remarks on Marianne Moore
, discovered just in time how important ED
's experiments were in...
Literary responses
Mary Butts
Although her work received mixed reviews, MB
was generally recognized as an important if eccentric literary figure during her lifetime, and she was highly praised by other modernist writers, including Ezra Pound
, Marianne Moore
Cultural formation
Bryher
From an early age, she fostered relationships with such innovative contemporaries as H. D.
, Dorothy Richardson
, Sylvia Beach
, and Marianne Moore
. In her life writings, Bryher places most importance on her...
Friends, Associates
Bryher
Bryher read and was highly enthusiastic about Marianne Moore
's poetry, which H. D.
had recommended to her. In 1921, following their meeting in the United States, Bryher arranged and paid for the publication...
Travel
Bryher
In September 1920, Bryher's desire to meet American poets and see the liberating New World took her, H. D.
, and H. D.'s daughter
to the United States. Bryher met H. D.'s associate Marianne Moore
Literary responses
Bryher
Unlike Development, which received much initial critical attention, Two Selves was reviewed in only one journal, the Manchester Guardian. Marianne Moore
wrote privately to Bryher, telling her that she thought the novel a...
Textual Production
Bryher
Desmond MacCarthy
had launched Life and Letters in June 1928; it issued its last number this month, and Bryher's new publication first appeared in September. It merged it with the London Mercury after May 1939...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath
, who began with negative comments about EB
, later developed admiration for her fine originality, always surprising, never rigid, flowing, juicier than Marianne Moore
who is her godmother.
Rees-Jones, Deryn. “Writing ELIZABETH”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 42-62.
In her junior year at college EB
interviewed T. S. Eliot
, who was in town to deliver the Norton Lectures. A year later she met Marianne Moore
.
Marshall, Megan. Elizabeth Bishop. A Miracle for Breakfast. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
34-6
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bishop
Important among EB
's friendships were those with Marianne Moore
(whom she met in March 1934 while she was still at college and learned a lot from in her early years in New York, but...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Bishop
Her slim collection had been ten years in the making, and spanned the period before and after the second world war. She had worked hard at the last moment, spurred on by her editor and...