Marianne Moore Biography and List of Works

American poet, highly esteemed by her fellow colleagues. Moore's often-quoted advice was that poets should present imaginary gardens with real toads in them. Characteristic for her works is cryptic associational logic and biting wit. Her best-known poems feature animals and are written in precise, clear language. Moore was a friend to many of the greatest artists and writers of the 20th century, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings and Allen Ginsberg.

"The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best."

Marianne Moore was born near St. Louis, Missouri, as the daughter of an engineer-inventor. Her father suffered a mental breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. The family moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where her mother worked as teacher.

Moore graduated in 1909 from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, with a degree in biology and histology. She taught typing and bookkeeping for four years at the India School in Carlisle. Her first poems appeared in the Egoist and Harriet Moore's Poetry in 1915. Next year she moved to Cheltenham, New Jersey, with her mother. In 1918 she moved to New York City, again with her mother, who died in 1947. After 1919, living in Brooklyn, she devoted herself to writing, working initially as a secretary, private tutor and library assistant.

In 1921 Moore's first book, POEMS, appeared in London, when she was 34. It was published without her knowledge by two of her friends, Hilda Doolittle and Robert McAlmon. Poems was followed by MARRIAGE (1923) and OBSERVATIONS (1924), which was published in the US and won the Dial Award. These works contain some of her best-known poems, including 'To Steam Roller', 'The Fish', 'When I Buy Pictures', 'Peter', 'The Labours of Hercules' and 'Poetry'.

In 1925 she became an acting editor of The Dial, an influential American journal of literature and arts, where she worked until the journal was discontinued in 1929. During these years she published texts from such writers as Paul Valery, T.S. Eliot, who admired her language, Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, and Ortega y Gasset. Moore's SELECTED POEMS (1935) was highly praised by Eliot.

As several other poets in her time, Moore was interested in the creative process and the relation between poetic emotion and real things. Moore's poetry is marked by an unconventional but disciplined use of metrics and ironic tone. Her books contain references to scientific and historical works and to current affairs. Among her favourite subjects are exotic animals, which she also described in the essay 'What There is to See at the Zoo' (1987).

"The zoo shows us that privacy is a fundamental need of all animals. For considerable periods, animals in the zoo will remain out of sight in the quiet of their dens or houses. Glass, recently installed in certain parts of the snake house at the Bronx Zoo makes it possible to see from the outside, but not out from the inside."

World War II deepened Moore's personal worldview, which was fundamentally religious in nature - she was a lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church. Acceptance of the human lot is seen in her collection WHAT ARE YEARS? (1941). Her tragic identification with the world of pain reflected from NEVERTHELESS (1944). Her mother appears to have been Moore's closest friend, and her death affected her deeply. Moore kept a notebook of her mother's sayings, and regarded her as almost a collaborator, especially with the translation of The Fables of La Fontaine. Collected poems Moore dedicated to her mother.

Moore's later books include the Pulitzer Prize winning COLLECTED POEMS (1951), which was also awarded the National Book Award (1952) and the Bollingen Prize in 1953, PREDILECTIONS (1955), a volume of critical papers, and IDIOSYNCRASY AND TECHNIQUE: TWO LECTURES (1958). Despite of her small output - some seventy poems in total - Moore's influence is seen in such writers as Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarell, Richard Wilbur and Robert Lowell, and among her admirers was T.S. Eliot. Marianne Moore died in New York City on February 5, 1972. She was a prolific letter-writer - producing sometimes up to 50 letters a day.

For further reading: The Time of the Dial by W. Wasserstrom (1963); Marianne Moore by B.F. Engel (1964); Concordance by G. Lane (1972); Marianne Moore: A Reference Guide by C.S. Abbott (1978); Marianne Moore by L. Stapleton (1978); Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions by B. Costello (1981); Marianne Moore by E. Phillips (1982); Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement by Grace Schulman (1986); Hints and Disguises: Marianne Moore and Her Contemporaries by Celeste Goodridge (1989); Marianne Moore by Bernard F. Engel (1989); Marianne Moore: The Art of a Modernist, ed. by Joseph Parisi (1990); Marianne Moore: A Literary Life by Charles Molesworth (1991); Illusion Is More Precise Than Precision: The Poetry of Marianne Moore by Darlene Williams Erickson (1992); Omissions Are Not Accidents: Gender in the Art of Marianne Moore by Jeanne Heuving (1992); Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore: The Psychodynamics of Creativity by Joanne Feit Diehl (1993); Marianne Moore : Questions of Authority by Cristanne Miller (1995); The Web of Friendship: Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens by Robin G. Schulze (1995); Cultural Critique and Abstraction: Marianne Moore and the Avant-Garde by Elisabeth W. Joyce (1999) - Trivia: In 1968 Moore threw out the first ball for opening day at the Yankee Stadium - she has also said that she would have liked to have invented the 'eight-shaped stitch with which the outer leather is drawn tight on a baseball'. - - - Moore, who never married, was said to have been intensely jealous of Eliot's second marriage in 1957.

POEMS, (1921)