Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moorewas an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 November 1887
CityKirkwood, MO
CountryUnited States of America
mind ears should
In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.
procedures chromosomes plans
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.
eye legs faces
the small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth, to droop or rise
mind enchanting
The mind is an enchanting thing.
giving letters
he who gives quickly gives twice / in nothing so much as in a letter.
mother character stories
Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.
time use interruptions
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ...
work hands weather
Concurring hands divide flax for damask that when bleached by Irish weather has the silvered chamois-leather water-tightness of a skin.
shoes white dancing
The deft white-stockinged dance in thick-soled shoes! Denmark's sanctuaried Jews!
stars loss sky
[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.
sea return looks
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
ocean sea bells
the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink-- in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
men moon night
Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast each with a splendor which man in all his vileness cannot set aside; each with an excellence!
ties victory knots
Victory won't come to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times