Marianne Moore by Kim RobertsA poet I return to again and again is Marianne Moore. She has an odd, precise, mathematical quality to her poems, many of which are written in syllabics. But she often combines syllabics with rhyme to make nonce forms. For example, "Nevertheless," one of my favorites, is written in three-line stanzas with six syllables to a line, but lines two and three always rhyme.
"The Fish" has an even more complex pattern: five-line stanzas with one syllable in line one, three in line two, nine in line three, six in line four, and nine in line five. The rhyme scheme is AABBC.
Moore loved to create challenges for herself. She also incorporated quotes from books she read, often completely out of context, because she delighted in the flexibility of language and because, as she wrote, "I have not been able to outgrow this hybrid method of composition."
Moore examined the objects of the world closely. I admire her humility. She does not write about herself, but she is infused throughout the poems as an observer. She writes ardently about nature (often picking strange animals as her subject: jerboa, basilisk, pangolin). Her themes, whether writing about the paper nautilus, marriage, or describing a mountain glacier, are always filled with a sense of rigorous, intellectual wonder.
Her main subject is awe, and re-reading her, she continues to surprise.
Kim Roberts is the author of two books of poems, most recently The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007). She edits the online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly and lives in Washington, DC.
Comments
And that Moore invented her own metrical modernism; what she was doing, was a close approximation to what a fili poet in the bardic tradition Moore claimed closest poetic lineage with; openly and proudly, her sense of core self being Irish, is something the casual observer may overlook; but Moore at heart, was a mid-west plastic paddy hooked on her myth, and at that time, in the time of Butler Yeats, all before him bowed and it is clear that those who tried to escape his sun-like Ra god and original Moor Buddha Mystic intellect and balance on which Eliot ultimately measures the few dusty platitudinous musicality all possess and with which our vive emits itself, and the up or down weights of make believe, gather in Moore in a very logical way.
The strictest bardic verse forms native Gaelic britons practiced, reached its peak in 12C, seven centuries after the literate culture began and by the time Godfrey O'Daly (one of the top three medieval gaelic poets) was composing in the south west of Ireland for the Desmonds and MaCarthys; as technically challenging and unsurpassable as the most difficult to master metrical forms, which where only begun after the seventh year of seven six month semesters, from 1 November Samhain to Beltaine - 1 May, when a first cuckoo was heard, the schools broke up for summer and the students dispersed to their hime places, and for 1300 years from 4-5 to 18C this cultural reality, moulded the native language Tradition of a shared North European poetic, alliterative at first, but which evolvd into very elaborate metrical perfection really - dan direach - Art Straight translation, and i think Moore --- if she didn't have first hand knowledge of them -- through the center-poet Yeats, we can plausibly conjecture, a fairly hefty focus into the reality of the literate tradtion of Ireland, was the (subconscious?) gravity of its native language, trod some role played there, and if she arrived at these metrical reflections of her uniquely ordered mind, with not a jot of understanding of the bardic ways; the source contained her pattern made and behind Moore, what Plato called us not to step beyond, a measure, beam or balance, do not step across these, and you cannot go wrong. Plato, who is the father Intellect and imagination, creational deity ghost of the bronze age.
Moore was hostage to the gods of this canon, the Nordic pantheon being almost unknown then, but the re-assergance of this ancient myth, returned made up but possessing some coherent flame -- often captured in the simplest of gestures, facial ticks, silent recognitions and personal inner ticks, freighted out - as in Moore -- to uniquely self invented forms.
and it is here we find out if we Love or not. that we ask ourselves, have we got what it takes to make the next step into the light and not darken bright what flash nor imprimatur may conceal, regailing atoms sub-quantom, s/he came frittering away the sun, chade chaser, shadow lowerer and love a beholding the Home End hint of disclosure, flagrant release and three times the eye chief around what enfolden dice, chance and fix, form and returning exit of a triangular circle and square, lots to ponder, great article - as always, nice to read Saunders.
He is spot on with some of his points, and i agree with him about Du Millars and Begnal's collections being *relatively concrete in their approach*
gra agus swift Daithi todd, dave in Oz asking for a kiss for Moore to dance within the door, beneath the portal behind the frame of stone age energy-ley lining the broad and pleasant sceptered rock on which the metrical challenge of dan direch, Moore's work uncannilly reflects this, this seeking a perfect form, a mathmatical game.
But the I i pretend to possess behind the i who eye really, am not interested in sounding clever, but a balance of intellect and creativity, 50/50 as the old texts reveal to any half interested in bardry and the metrical complexity, the sheer eye-gulpingly over awing amount of rules and measures in the whole career of the student who trained as Moore, putting in that amount of dedication, commitment to a Poetic, which amounts no more to the belief Moore had in her prosody being connected to her spirtual self, her psyche, what Plato referred to as the Soul of Man womenkind and order of the Heroic era, and the joy now we have the measures back and to work with, speaks of a time one must dash off into..