A Marianne Moore Reader: Poems and Essays

by Marianne Moore

POEMS AND ESSAYS, A MARIANNE MOORE READER, FIFTH PRINTING, 1972.

Genres: Poetry

301 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 1961

About the author

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

Reviews

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marianne Moore is one of our National Treasures, not least because of the following:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/s...
(By the way, if someone knows how to produce or procure a poster of that picture, please get it to me. It will go in my office forever.)

But also because she is totally charming, utterly humble, and completely impossible to understand in a nonthreatening way. She says occasional memorable things that make you feel wise and good and on the right team. She writes poems about animals that you didn't know existed, like the pangolin and the jerboa. She was asked to help name a car by the Ford Motor Company.
Read her. Love her. Name children after her.

[Jack Heller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consider a book finished when I have read from it the writing I bought it for. I bought this for the poetry, and I went ahead and read the Paris Review interview too. I may go back and read Moore's correspondence with the Ford Motor Company, something I hadn't known about but which sounds interesting and is short.

Moore has been a presence, but I have never had to read her, and I am not sure people do read her much any more. My favorite poems are those that meditate upon some animal, usually one a person wouldn't think of as cuddly, and her baseball poems. I also enjoyed the poetic translations of LaFontaine's fables. If a reader finds Moore too modernist in style, the Paris Review essay might help. It's interesting on its own if a reader is somewhat familiar with the major modernist poets of the early 20th Century.