Abstract Prismatic Color: Marianne Moore and the Visual Arts by linda Leaven Within the context of Pound/Eltot modernism Moore necessartly becomes eccentric and even inscrutable, for Symbolism, Imagism and the ·mythical method· fail to explain her syllabic verse, her fervent morality and her predflect1on for exotic animals. Moore's contemporaries in New York, however, especially the avant-garde visual artists, provide a more illumi­ nating context. During the years most crucial to her poetic career-from 1915, when she first visited Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery, through the late twenties, when she was edftor of the .lUJ.l-Moore regularly v1s1ted New York galleries and associated with experimental photographers, sculptors and painters. Moore shares with these artists at least two of their spatial concerns. Her interest in the appearance of the poem on the page parallels modern painters· interest in the surface of the canvas. Thus, her stanzas are not merely ·syllabic· but are architectural, spatial structures; and not only her stanzas but also her images and syntax create an ·armor· of hard, geometric surfaces 11ke those of analytic Cubism. Also, Moore's verbal assemblages of incongruous facts, quotations and images resemble certain visual assem­ blages, most notably those of Arthur Dove. Moore's poems are olaces where she can display all the things that she 11kes. Even more useful than recognizing the structural techniques Moore shared with the painters Is recognizing the aesthetic, moral and even spiritual values they shared. Kandinsky's principle of ·inner necessity,· for iii instance, resembles Moore's notion of the ·genuine.· Besides accounting 1n part for the strong fascination primitive art held for Moore's contempor­ aries, Kand1nsky's ideas help explain why animals, especially exotic ones, are Moore's aesthetic and moral exemplars. And Stieglitz's morality of ·stra1ghe photography, to which not only photographers but also painters such as the Precisionists ascribed, explains the important relationship in Moore's aesthetic between feeling and precision: the artist must have a relentless devotion to her subject in order to present it precisely. Placing Moore within the context of visual artists does not prove her poetry to be derivative of other artists' styles but rather proves her to be a strongly individual talent wtthtn a group of artists who revere tnd1vidua11ty. To the memory of my grandmothers, Martha Boone Leavell and Ella Craig McNeal Acknowledgments Above all I am grateful to Monroe Spears, whose encouragement and patience have been invaluable to me and whose modest dignity is a lasting inspiration. I thank Terrence Doody for first kindling my interest in Marianne Moore and for his ever challenging ideas. William Camfield's lectures on modern art provided much of the basis for this dissertation, and his careful reading of it made my remarks about visual artists more precise. Although not officially a member of my committee, William Piper has given me far more support and guidance than most official advisers would have given. I thank my mother and my father for their unabating confidence in my abilities, and I thank Leslie Marenchin for his empathy and humor. Elizabeth Collins listened to my ideas in their various stages and contributed valuable insights into specific poems. My mother, Marjory Leavell, assisted with final editoria 1 revisions. A dissertation fellowship from the Mellon Grant to Enhance the Humanities, a summer dissertation fellowship from Rice University and the financial support of my father and mother enabled me to work on the disser­ tation full-time for over a year. I am indebted to Patricia Willis for answering many questions and directing me to useful materials in the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. Clive Driver, the literary executor of Marianne Moore's estate, has granted permission to quote from Moore's unpublished letters, notebooks and essays, and Perdita Schaffner·, H. D.'s daughter, has granted permission to quote from H. D.'s unpublished letters to Moore. yj Macm111an Pub11shtng Company approved my quottng any poems from ·The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore to which it owns rights. Both of the followtng poems from The Complete Poems of Martanne Moore are reprtnted by permtsston of Viking Penguin Inc.: "The Sycamore,· copyright o 1956 by Marianne Moore, and "To a Chameleon,· copyright o 1959 by Martanne Moore. The following two poems are reprinted by permission of New Directions: Ezra Pound, "In a Statton of the Metro,· from Personae, copyright o 1926 by Ezra Pound; and William Carlos Williams, "Young Sycamore,· from the Collected Ear11er Poems of W1111am Carlos W1111ams, copyr1ght o 1938 by New Direct1ons Pub11sh1ng Corporat1on. Contents lntroduct1on .........•.•.........•...•..••.••. ~· .......•.. .1 1. ·sojourn in the Whale·. •• 12 2. A Poetry of Surfaces •• .44 3. A Place to See Things •••••• • •...73 4. The Forms of ldtosyncrasy. ••• I 02 5. The Morallty of Prectston. • 135 Conclusion ••• .163 Works C1ted •••••••.•.•••...••••••.•...••••...••.••..•.. 167 lntroduct1on The critic of Marianne Moore's poetry who I be11eve best conveys the uniqueness of her talent and accords her the highest praise for her "revolutionary discovery· of a twentieth-century American poetic-"the language flattened, the language exhibited, the language staunchly condensing information while frisking in enjoyment of its release from the obligation to do no more than inform"-at the same time undermines that praise by accusing Moore of being unconscious of her discovery. "She resembles Columbus,· says Hugh Kenner, "whose mind was on something other than opening new worlds, and died supposing he had shown how to sail to China· ("Disliking It" 106). Kenner mistakes Moore's humil1ty for ignorance and supposes that because she did not write profusely and zealously, as did William Carlos Williams, about the importance of finding a distinctly American idiom, that she did not understand American modernism as well as Williams and other writers did. Kenner should heed the experience of Moore's friends, Alfred Kreymborg (Krimmie) and Williams himself, who inevitably found themselves losers at the game of finding a subject about which Moore was not expertly informed: Both men held the mind of Marianne Moore in absolute admiration. What they lacked in intellectual stability was freely and unconsciously supplied by her. And her familiarity with books on every conceivable theme astonished them. "How she can spin words!" Krimmie would say and Bill would add, "We're a pair of tongue-tied tyros by comparison.· "Not long ago,· Krimmie confessed, "I tried to catch her napping.· 6111 rubbed his hands and grinned with expectancy. "Never having found her at a loss on any topic whatsoever, wanted to give myself the pleasure at least once of hearing her stumped about something. Certain that only an experience 2 completely strange to her would be the thing, I invited her to a ball game at the Polo Grounds. This descent into the world of the low-brow started beautifully. It was a Saturday afternoon and the Cubs and Giants were scheduled for one of their ancient frays. The 'L' was jammed with fans and we had to stand all the way uptown and hang on to straps. Marianne was totally oblivious to the discomfiture anyone else would have felt and, in answer to a question of mine, paraded whole battalions of perfectly marshalled ideas tn long columns of balanced periods which no lurching on the part of the train or pushing on the part of the crowd disturbed. Wa1t till we reach the grounds, I promised myself, and Matty winds up, tosses a perfect fadeaway, the batter misses it, and Marianne goes on talking. "Well, I got her safely to her seat and sat down beside her. Without so much as a glance toward the players at practice grabbing grounders and chasing fungos, she went on giving me her impression of the respective technic a1 achievements of Mr. Pound and Mr. Aldington without missing a turn in the rhythm of her speech, until I, a little impatient, touched her arm and, indicating a man in the pitcher's box winding up with the movement Matty's so famous for, interrupted: 'But Marianne, watt a moment, the game's about to begin. Don't you want to watch the first ball?' 'Yes indeed,· she said, stopped, blushed and leaned forward. The old blond boy delivered a tantalizing fadeaway which hovered in the atr and then, just as it reached the batter, Shorty Slagle, shot from his shoulders to his knees and across the plate. 'Strike!' bawled Umpire Ems He. 'Excellent,· said Marianne. "Delighted, I quickly turned to her with: 'Do you happen to know the gentleman who threw that strike?' "'I've never seen him before,· she admitted, 'but I take it it must be Mr. Mathewson.' "I could only gasp, 'Why?' "'I've read his instructive book on the art of pitching-' "'Strike two!' interrupted Bob Emslie. "'And it's a pleasure,· she continued imperturbably, 'to note how unerringly his execution supports his theories-· ··strike three, batter's out!' concluded the umpire and, as Shorty Slagle slunk away, glared toward the Chicago bench for the next victim. • • • • (Kreymborg 243-45) (This incident, reported by Kreymborg, took place in the mid to late teens, long before Moore acquired her reputation as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in the fifties.) If Marianne Moore's discovery of a new poetic was unconscious, it was so only to the degree that her poetic was so uniquely her own; but her 3 early comprenens1on (wnlcn 1s not to say tneory) or Amerlcan moaern1sm could hardly have found 1ts equal even among such proselytizers as William Carlos W1111ams and Ezra Pound. Moore's awareness of the need for a new aesthetic resulted in part from her inability to get her own poems into print.