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Marianne Moore University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Supervised Undergraduate Student Research Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects and Creative Work Spring 5-1998 Imagination of Reality: Marianne Moore Mary Elizabeth Stanley University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj Recommended Citation Stanley, Mary Elizabeth, "Imagination of Reality: Marianne Moore" (1998). Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/283 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Work at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSITY HONORS PROGRAM SENIOR PROJECT - APPROVAL N a me: _r_~C~~_~_Sr~~ __________________________ .____ _ College: _f\.cr~__ ~_~~~ Department: ~\.9J~¥ ______________ _ Faculty Mentor: -B~---~l~\.~r~-.:----------------------­ p R OJ EC T TITL E: j!Y'Q...~iXiliQ£L-<iS---~LbJ.-~Jrn{!.ClliClDf.J.Xkl:)~ I have reviewed this completed senior honors thesis with this student and certify that it is a project commensurate with honors level undergraduate research in this field. Signed: ----~--~..a.sr.::::=_----------------, Faculty Mentor Da te: -----~--.k.T--.L'Z.f.Y Comments (Optional): Imagination of Reality: Marianne Moore Mary E. Stanley University Honors Senior Project May 5, 1998 Stanley 2 Table of Contents Abstract .................................... 3 Chronology .................................. 4 Sample of Poetry ......................... 7-11 "The Monkeys" .......................... 7 "To a Steam Roller" .................... 8 "The Past Is the Present" .............. 8 " ourn in the Whale" ................. 9 "What Are years?" ..................... 10 "0 to Be a Dragon" .................... ll "I May, I Might, I Must" .............. ll Introduction-Biographical Essay ............ 12 Poems with Explications ................. 17-33 "The Fish" ...................... ..... 17 Explication of "The sh" ............. 18 "Poetry" .............................. 23 ication of "Poetry" ............... 24 "The Mind Is an Echanting Thing" ...... 29 Explication of "The Mind ... Thing" ..... 30 Conclusion-Philosophy and Style Essay ...... 34 Works Ci ted ................................ 38 Stanley 3 Abstract For my senior project, I chose to step away from my career interests of veterinary medicine and biology and to investigate a area of my own personal pursuit. I have always enjoyed poetry; therefore, I decided to research the life of the poet Marianne Moore and to explicate some of her works. One of the primary reasons that I picked Moore out of the numerous poets is her interesting view that poetry should be created through the use of real, concrete objects. I had read many of her works in the past and chose to study them in depth noting the similarities in Moore's works. After reviewing the vast number of works created by Marianne Moore, I realized that I must choose a few particular poems to illustrate. I chose "The Fish," "Poetry," and "The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing." All of these poems help to illustrate the main theme of Moore's poetry and all created vivid images in my mind when I read them for the first time. Through analyzing these three poems of Marianne Moore, I realized that Moore tends to have a strict structure to all of her poems and uses many literary devices to enhance the meaning and images created by her poems. Another common theme throughout all of Moore's poetry is that she uses common words that are not difficult to understand, words which the majority of her audience will already know the meaning. stanley 4 Chronology 1887 On November 15, Marianne Moore is born to John Milton and Mary (Warner) Moore Kirkwood, Missouri. Her father a nervous breakdown and goes to live with his parents. The rest of the family moves in with Moore's maternal grandfather, the Reverend John Riddle Warner. 1894 Moore, along with her mother and older brother John Warner Moore, move to Carlisle, Pennsylvania after Moore's grandfather, the Reverend John Riddle Warner, dies. 1896- Moore is educated at the Metzger Institute, a 1905 girl's school in Carlisle. 190 She attends Bryn Mawr College where she 1909 receives her B.A.; she attends along with Ida Doo lit tIe (H. D. ) . 1907 Moore has some academic difficulties and begins to write poetry_ Moore's first published poerty appears in Bryn Mawr journals. 1910 Moore graduates from Carlisle Commercial College. 1911 She travels in England and France with mother. 1911- Moore begins to teach commercial subjects at 1915 the United States Indian School in Carlisle. 1915 Moore's first poems appear in the Egoist (London), Poetry (Chicago), and Others (New York). 1916 Moore moves to Chatham, New Jersey with her mother in order to keep house for her brother-­ now a Presbyterian minister like his grandfather. 1918 Moore moves to Greenwich Village, New York City, with her mother. Moore work's as a private tutor. Stanley 5 1918 meets many poets including William Carlos Williams and Wallace stevens. 1920 Moore's poems appear in The Dial. 1921 Press of London publishes Moore's 1921- Moore works part-time at the Hudson Park Branch 1925 of the New York Public Library. 1923 "Marriage" is published separately. 1924 Press publishes Moore's Moore receives the Dial Award. 1925 Moore becomes the acting editor of 1929 stops publishing. Moore and her mother move to Brooklyn, New York. Moore starts writing full time. 1932 The Helen Haire Levinson Prize for Poetry is awarded to Moore. 1934 Moore meets Elizabeth Bishop. 1935 Moore's Selected Poems is publi in New York and in London with an introduct by T.S. Eliot. The Ernest Hartsock Memorial awarded to Moore. 1936 Moore's The Pangolin and Other Verse is published. 1940 The Shelley Memorial Award is given to Moore. 1941 Moore's What Are Years? is published. 1944 Moore's Nevertheless is published. The Harriet Monroe Poetry Award is given to Moore. 1945 Moore receives a Guggenheim lowship. She helps translate Rock Crystal. 1947 Moore is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Moore's mother dies. 1949 "A Face" is published separately. stanley 6 1951 Moore's Collected Poems is published. The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize is given to Moore. 1953 M. Carey Thomas Award and the National Institute of Arts Gold Medal for are awarded to Moore. 1955 Moore is elected a merr~er of the can Academy of Arts and Letters. 1956 Moore's Like a Bulwark is published. 1957 Moore participates in the Bollingen Poetry Festival at The Johns Hopkins University. 1958 Moore's Idiosyncracy and Technigue: Two Lectures is published. 1959 Moore's 0 to Be a Dragon is published. 1961 A Marianne Moore Reader is publi 1962 Moore's The Absentee: A Comedy in Four Acts is published. 1963 Moore translates "Puss in Boots," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "Cinderella" 1 by Charles Perrault. 1966 Moore moves to Manhattan. 1967 Moore's The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore is published. The Edward MacDowell Medal and Poetry Society of America's Gold Medal are awarded to Moore. 1968 The National Medal for Li Awarded to Moore. Moore throws out the first of the season at Yankee Stadium. 1972 On February 5, Marianne Moore in her sleep at the age of eighty-four. 1981 The Complete Poems, defini tion with Moore's final revisions, is published. stanley 7 The Monkeys winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin and strictly practical arrendages were there, the small cats; and the parakeet-­ trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying bark and portions of the food it could not eat. I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent than it is dim. It is difficault to recall the ornament, speech, and precise manner of what one might call the minor aquaintances twenty years back; but I shall not forget him--that Gilgamesh among the hairy carnivora - that cat with the wedge-shaped,slate-grey marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail, astingently remarking, "They have imposed on us with their pale half-fledged protestations, trembling about in inarticulate frenzy, saying it is not for us to understand art; finding it all so difficult, examining the thing as if it were inconceivably arcanic, as symmet- rically frigid as if it had been carved out of chrysoprase or marble - strict with tension, malignant in its power over us and deeper than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp, rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber, and fur." -Marianne Moore Stanley 8 To a steam Roller illustration is nothing to you without the application. You lack half wit. You crush all the icles down into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them. Sparkling chips of rock are crushed down to level of the parent block. Were not "impersonal judgement in aersthetic matters, a metaphysical impossibility," you might fairly acheive it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you, but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists. -Marianne Moore The Past Is the Present If external action is and rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a class the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said--and I think I his exact words, "Hebrew poetry is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstast fords the occasion and expediency determines the form. -Marianne Moore stanley 9 Sojourn ln Whale Trying to locked doors with a sword, threading the points of needles, planting shade trees upside down; swallowed by the opaqueness of one whom the seas love better than they love you, Ireland-- you have lived and lived on every kind of shortage.
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