The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore

by Marianne Moore, Patricia Willis (Editor)

This volume includes Marianne Moore's regular reviews, critical essays on Stevens, Williams, Pound, and others, and comments on painting, fashion, and the Holland Tunnel

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction

723 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 1986

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

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could never, nor ever would I want to, read this book from beginning to end. I open it on occasion to relish the pleasures of manner as destiny, of precision as ecstasy. Moore is stalwart in the true expression of her idiosyncratic thought:

"To write unemotionally of this book is to do it injustice. In depth of presentation it is the longed-for contrast to historical unveracity on the screen."

What about this doozy?

"Poetry is an unintelligible unmistakable vernacular like the language of the animals--a system of communication whereby a fox with a turkey too heavy for it to carry, reappears shortly with another fox to share the booty, and Wallace Stevens is a practiced hand at this kind of open cypher."

That may be the best worst sentence--which is to say, the most wonderful sentence--I have ever read.

I'm not sure I've ever finished a single piece in this book. I fall enthralled with the serpentine syntax and multiple implications of each merciless sentence. And then I put down the book until I need another dose of razzle-dazzle.

Alas, this volume does not include Moore's famous letters to the Ford Motor Company, in which they asked her help in naming a car (eventually, The Edsel -- not Moore's name). For that gem you need The Marianne Moore Reader.

[Elizabeth]

different picture good condition
hardcover with dustjacket
edited by and with intro by Patricia C Willis