Marianne Moore

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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
Occupation Harriet Shaw Weaver
The Egoist Press went on to publish Dora Marsden's The Definition of the Godhead, Eliot 's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Pound 's Dialogues of Fontenelle, Lewis 's Tarr,...
Friends, Associates Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW and Bryher were good friends who collaborated on publication projects (Marianne Moore 's Poems, H. D. 's Hymen, and others) and travelled together.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
177, 244-6, 465
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Taylor
Again the story unfolds in a small country village. It centres on the friendship of three women: Frances, a painter who was formerly a governess, and the younger Liz and Camilla, who come to stay...
Literary responses Gertrude Stein
GS was disappointed at the small enthusiasm the book generated when it was published. Only Marianne Moore reviewed it favourably. Katherine Anne Porter despaired of its length and density, but argued that to shorten it...
Literary responses Stevie Smith
This brought her work to a large and enthusiastic audience. Sylvia Plath wrote to SS declaring herself a fan. Several poems were printed in US papers and periodicals to prepare for the American edition in...
Friends, Associates Edith Sitwell
During her first visit to the USA, ES met Charlie Chaplin , Greta Garbo , and Marianne Moore . A press party at the Gotham Book Mart in New York was attended by ES ...
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...
Literary responses Edith Sitwell
Sitwell was subject to dismissive antifeminist comment from such critics as Geoffrey Grigson and Harold Acton .
Hill, Rosemary. “No False Modesty”. London Review of Books, Vol.
33
, No. 20, pp. 25-6.
26
The poets of the Movement were famously dismissive of ES . Al Alvarez published a notorious and...
Intertextuality and Influence Penelope Shuttle
PSwrites five mornings per week and, when a fragment hits, always has a notebook to hand. She always leaves first drafts to settle for a few weeks. Influences on her writing, she says, include...
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...
Friends, Associates Dorothy Richardson
Throughout the late 1910s and 1920s, DR 's other friends and acquaintances included Violet Hunt , May Sinclair , Marianne Moore , C. A. Dawson-Scott , Catherine Carswell , and Sinclair Lewis .
Richardson, Dorothy. Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson. Editor Fromm, Gloria G., University of Georgia Press.
39, 107, 138, 141, 170, 284
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.
Literary responses Dorothy Richardson
Reviewers, one of whom was American poet Marianne Moore , considered the book very handsome. Its publisher, Jackson , took an increased interest in Richardson as a novelist even before this text came out, and...
Friends, Associates Ruth Pitter
RP knew T. S. Eliot well enough to enjoy a courtly encounter with him at a bus stop, but she felt his great innovations had not necessarily been a good thing for English poetry, and...

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.