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.
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,...
Literary responses
T. S. Eliot
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
Charlotte Mew
Marianne Moore
was quoted on the dust-jacket: This collection is to me extraordinary—unforced, and masterly in a technical way, almost without exception. There are in the style traces of W. B. Yeats
and Thomas Hardy
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.
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
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bishop
Early reviews of North & South were not enthusiastic, until the tide was turned following warm praise by Marianne Moore
, Randall Jarrell
, and then Robert Lowell
,
Astley, Neil. “Elizabeth Bishop: A Bibliography; Elizabeth Bishop: Chronology”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 175-00.
195-6
who was dismissive of some...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
Literary responses
H. D.
The volume was reviewed on this day in the Times Literary Supplement. It was covered by Marianne Moore
for the Dial.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
146
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
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
