MariAnne Moore By: MaryLynne Shaw December 3-9, 2009

Author Background… My author/poet is MariAnne Moore. She was born November 15, 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri. She was raised by her grandmother, because her father was committed to a mental hospital after her birth. 1905, she was enrolled in the Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and received her A.B. in She majored in biology and histology.

Author Background Continued… She then taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until Later after her teaching years, she began to publish her poems, in 1921 her 1st book on poetry was published, Poems. From 1925 to 1929 she worked as the editor of a literary journal, The Dial.

Author Background Continued… Moore was a Modernist poet. She wrote about unconventional, precise, inventive, and being witty. She explored animals and nature. She enjoyed boxing and baseball, in 1968 she pitched the 1st pitch of a baseball game at the Yankee Stadium.

Author Background Continued… Later after she suffered from a series of strokes and died February 5, 1972 at the age of 84. Moore never married. Her living room and along with all of her belongings was placed in the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia.

Major Works… In 1921, her 1st book on poetry was published, Poems. In 1951, Collected Poems, received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollinger Prize. Other major works, The Nation, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism. Her most famous poem was, “Poetry”

Major Works Continued… Poems, 1921 Selected Poems, 1935 Pangolin, 1936 What are Years and Other Poems, 1941 Nevertheless, 1944 Collected Poems, 1951 Like a Bulwark, 1959 O to be a Dragon, 1959

Poetry By: Marianne Moore I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for this genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because a high-surrounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same

Poetry Continued… thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand: the bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the baseball fan, the sanitation nor is it valid to discriminate against business documents and schoolbooks; all these phenomena are important.

Poetry Continued… One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be literalists of the imagination ---above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.

Influences… Her mother, Mary Warner Moore influenced Moore's literary disposition. She encouraged many young poets, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and James Merrill, and publishing early work, as well as refining poetic technique.

Historical Background… July 28, 1914-November WWI. September 1, 1939-September 2, WWII.

Pictures of Marianne Moore…

Questions for the Test… 1. Who was Marianne Moore raised by? 2. What kind of poet was he? 3. Name some major works. 4. Who influenced her to write? 5. Which two major wars went on during her time?

Cited Resources en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Moore ml?id=4780