Sometimes Less is Moore

Marianne Moore was born on November 15, 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri. Before the onset of World War I, Moore traveled across Europe, adventures that fueled her desire to produce poetry and helped her establish friendships with other literary types, including Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.

After twenty years of writing and advocating poetry, Moore was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for Collected Poems. Moore was an avid believer in the rhythm and lyrical quality of poetry. She loathed poems that while written correctly, lacked creativity and heartfelt language. Leaning into nearly Surrealist tendencies of expression, Moore compares similarly to William Carlos Williams. Both were members of "The Others," a circle of poets founded by Alfred Kreymborg. This was where Williams, who spent some of this time writing while he visited New York City, was introduced to the Dadaist movement.

In a stance similar to Moore, Williams believed that traditional poetic techniques should be abandoned; that they limited the creativity and newness of a poem and was hindered by classical European idioms. Williams sought to Americanize poetry, and his most recognizable work, "The Red Wheelbarrow" exemplifies that raw Americana that he sought to produce.

Moore's work hints at a similar aim, as can be seen in an excerpt from "Poetry":

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads

in them, shall we have

it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand,

in defiance of their opinion –

the raw material of poetry in

all its rawness, and

that which is on the other hand,

genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

"Poetry" was originally published in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, and actually appeared as the first poem in the final issue published. Other modernist poets, Williams included, participated in the magazine.

What I think ties Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams together is that while successful poets, both were something else. Poetry almost seemed like their natural expression to a deeper passion. It was to see the world, almost like an artist. As Bonnie Costello wrote for the Boston Review, "While T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were reading the classics, William Carlos Williams was looking at pictures. He was first a modernist, second a poet."

I would argue the same for Moore. As a reader you have to look at her poetry almost as though it is a work of art. The images come alive, and you are so engulfed in the emotion and expression of the piece. You don't just read what she or Williams write. You see it. You feel it.

Works Cited

Costello, Bonnie. "William Carlos Williams in a World of Painters." Boston Review June-July 1979. Web.

Moore, Marianne, and Grace Schulman. The Poems of Marianne Moore. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.