Marianne+Moore

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 * = **Marianne Moore**[[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Marianne_Moore_1935.jpg width="238" height="291" align="center"]]


 * Born: November 15, 1887**

=Biography=
 * Died: February 5, 1972** ||< Marianne Moore, a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, editor, translator, and reviewer, was greatly known for her cryptic zigzag logic, eccentric rhythms, irony, and wit. Her best-known poems feature animals and are written in precise, clear language. Because of her talent, Moore befriended many of the greatest artists and writers of the 20th century, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop, and E.E. Cummings. ||

Marianne Moore was born near St. Louis, Missouri on November 15, 1887. She was raised in the home of her grandfather, the pastor of Kirkwood Presbyterian Church. After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed with other relatives for two years, until 1896 when they moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Moore's mother worked as a teacher at a private girl's school. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught at the Carlisle Indian School until 1915. Later in 1918, Moore and her mother moved to New York City where Moore became an assistant at the New York Public Library in 1921. There she began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. Then Moore began to publish poetry professionally. Some of her selected works include: //Like a Bulwark//, //Nevertheless//, //O to Be a Dragon,// //Observations,// //Poems//, //Selected Poems////, Tell Me, Tell Me//, //The Arctic Fox//, //The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore////, The Pangolin and Other Verse////,// and //What Are Years?// =Poems=


 * The Mind is an Enchanting Thing**

code is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Giesking playing Scarltti;

like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi's rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground.

It has memory's ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope's fall, truly equivocal because trued by regnant certainty,

it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory's eye; it's conscientious inconsistency.

It tears off the veil; tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes - if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It's fire in the dove-neck's

iridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it's not a Herod's oath that cannot change.

code


 * By Disposition of Angels**

code Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it. Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit? Something heard most clearly when not near it? Above unparticularities, these unparticularities praise cannot violate. One has seen, in such steadiness never deflected, how by darkness a star is perfected.

Star that does not ask me if I see it? Fir that would not wish me to uproot it? Speech that does not ask me if I hear it Mysteries expound mysteries. Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate, no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her, too like him, and a-quiver forever.

code


 * O to Be a Dragon**

code If I, like Solomon,... could have my wish- my wish... O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven-of silkworm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!

code

=Analysis=

Reaction** ||  ||   ||   || Devices Used** ||  ||   || Moore symbolizes the dragon as a genuine poet which she wishes to become. || Scheme** || ABACCD || AAABCDD || ABCDEF || Context** || N/A || N/A || This poem recalls the biblical dream in which the Lord appeared to King Solomon and said, "Ask what I shall give thee."except Moore is asking for her wish instead. || "certainty" and "inconsistency." Moore uses recurring abstract words like "truly unequivocal,"and "trued by regnant certainty," to articulate the paradox. || In this poem Moore states a star is perfected by the darkness. This pertains to the bond between man and women because only when they are together do they shine brightest. || The theme of this poem is Moore's wish to become a dragon. What she means by this is she wishes to become "a symbol of the power of Heaven," like all other genuine poets. ||
 * || **The Mind is an Enchanting Thing** || **By Disposition of Angels** || **O to Be a Dragon** ||
 * **Personnel
 * **Poetic
 * **Rhyme
 * **Historical
 * **Theme** || This poem varies a paradoxical theme:

=Resources=

Grace Schulman. //The Poems of Marianne Moore//. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003. Print

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/96

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mmoor.htm

http://www.graywolfpress.org/Related_Content/Book_Excerpts/Excerpt_from_Can_Poetry_Matter?/