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.
Black and white photograph of Marianne Moore, standing against a bookshelf. Her grey hair is in a plait round her head; she wears a large dark jacket over a grey suit, collared shirt, and bow-tie.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Bishop
The Complete Poems contains some pieces uncollected at her death. The Collected Prose notably includes Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text H. D.
HD's reviews of poetry volumes for The Egoist show some of her literary principles already formed: the artist's responsibility to society as well as to art, her belief that art can stand against the selfishness...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Fleur Adcock
Again her introduction is interesting and trenchant. She observes that the early twentieth century already feels remote. Her selection runs from Charlotte Mew (born in 1869) to a clutch of women a little over thirty:...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text W. H. Auden
It is no wonder than that Auden is an entertaining critic, with a penchant for the gnomic whether in titles (his essay on detective stories is called The Guilty Vicarage; his essay on Kafka
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...
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
Having begun writing poetry in mid-1923, Richardson was initially reluctant to share her poems with even her intimates: for instance with Bryher, who was a close friend and sometimes a creative confidante to H. D.
Textual Production Carol Rumens
Since this year, 2007, CR has been picking a Poem of the Week for the Guardian newspaper, which prints the poem along with her commentary and analysis. Rumens like to pay attention to context and...
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...
Textual Features H. D.
This issue opened with an editorial by Dora Marsden . It contained poetry by Aldington, HD, F. S. Flint , D. H. Lawrence , Marianne Moore , and May Sinclair and prose articles giving the...
Textual Features Edith Sitwell
ES praises Marianne Moore as one of the very few women who have written poetry of worth.
British Book News. British Council.
(1951): 446
(She also, however, accords H. D. the highest praise.)
Textual Features Edith Sitwell
The English edition appeared the following year. Her choice for inclusion is, as usual, idiosyncratic. She begins well before Chaucer , with anonymous early religious poems in which may be heard, she writes, the creaking...
Reception H. D.
Before this book was published, Marianne Moore expressed great eagerness to see it, and Bryher 's preface to it.
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
163
Publishing H. D.
HD's work also featured in the pages of Margaret Anderson 's and Jane Heap 's The Little Review and in the Dial, whose editor, Marianne Moore , gave specific attention to establishing her reputation...
Author summary Medbh McGuckian
MMG , who lives in Northern Ireland, is well-regarded among contemporary poets writing in English. She began by writing a very private and reserved poetry. Using images from the home and from nature, she explored...

Timeline

1920: Scofield Thayer began editing The Dial, a...

Writing climate item

1920

Scofield Thayer began editing The Dial, a monthly magazine published in New York.

Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...

Writing climate item

Early 1936

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot ), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...

Texts

Moore, Marianne. Collected Poems. Faber and Faber, 1951.
Moore, Marianne. “Introduction”. The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, edited by Bonnie Costello et al., Knopf, 1997, p. ix - xv.
Moore, Marianne. “Introduction”. The Poems of Marianne Moore, edited by Grace Schulman, Faber, 2003, p. xix - xxx.
White, Heather Cass, and Marianne Moore. “Introduction”. New Collected Poems, Faber and Faber, 2017.
Moore, Marianne. New Collected Poems. Editor White, Heather Cass, Faber and Faber, 2017.
Moore, Marianne. Observations. The Dial, 1880-1929, 1924.
Moore, Marianne. Poems. Egoist, 1921.
Moore, Marianne. “Poetry”. Others, Vol.
5
, p. 5.
Moore, Marianne. Predilections. Viking, 1955.
Moore, Marianne, and T. S. Eliot. Selected Poems. Macmillan, 1935.
Moore, Marianne. Tell Me, Tell Me. Viking, 1966.
Moore, Marianne. The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. Macmillan, 1967.
Moore, Marianne. The Pangolin and Other Verse. Brendin, 1936.
Moore, Marianne. The Poems of Marianne Moore. Editor Schulman, Grace, Faber, 2003.
Moore, Marianne. The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore. Editors Costello, Bonnie et al., Knopf, 1997.