THOUGHTS ABOUT MARIANNE MOORE
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modernist, special-case, dryly elevated and abstract, she was to begin
with! "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." Butter not only wouldn't melt in this mouth, it wouldn't
go
in;
one runs away, an urchin in the gutter and glad to be, murmuring:
"The Queen of Spain
has
no legs." Or Miss Moore begins a poem, with
melting grace:
"If
yellow betokens infidelity,/ I am an infidel./ I
could not bear a yellow rose
ill
will/ Because books said that yellow
boded
ill,/
White promised well." One's eyes widen; one sits the poet
down in the porch swing, starts to
go
off to get her a glass of lemonade,
and sees her metamorphosed before one's eyes into a new
Critique oj
Practical Reason,
feminine gender: for her next words are, "However,
your particular possession,/ The sense of privacy,! Indeed might de–
precate/ Offended ears, and need not tolerate/ Effrontery." And that is
all; the
poem is
over. Sometimes, in her early poems, she has not a
tone but a manner, and a rather mannered manner at that-two or
three such poems together seem a dry glittering expanse, i.e., a desert.
But in her later work she often escapes entirely the vice most natural
to her,
this
abstract, mannered, descriptive, consciously prosaic com–
mentary (accompanied, usually, by a manneredness of leaving out
all introductions and transitions and explanations, as
if
one could repre–
sent a stream by reproducing only the stepping-stones one crossed it on).
As she says, compression is the first grace of style-is almost a defining
characteristic of the poetry our age most admires; but such passages
as those I am speaking of are not compressed-the time wasted on Be–
ing Abstract more than makes up for the time saved by leaving out.
Looking at a poem like "What Are Years," we see how much her style
has changed. And the changes in style represent a real change in the
poet: when one is struck by the poet's seriousness and directness and
lack of manner-both her own individual excellence and by that anon–
ymous excellence the best poets sometimes share-it is usually in one
of the poems written during the '30s and '40s. I am emphasizing this
difference too much, since even its existence is ignored, usually; but it
is interesting what a different general impression the
Collected Poems
gives, compared to the old
Selected Poems.
(Not that it wasn't wonder–
ful too.)
Some of the changes in Miss Moore's work can be considered in
terms of Armour. Queer terms, you say? They are hers, not mine : a
good deal of her poetry is specifically (and changingly) about armour,
weapons, protection, places to hide; and she is not only conscious that
this is so, but after a while writes poems about the fact that it is so. As
