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4 - Marianne Moore: a voracity of contemplation

from POETRY IN THE MACHINE AGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Sacvan Bercovitch
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Perhaps no major poet of American modernism attained more public recognition in the United States during her or his lifetime than Marianne Moore (1887–1972). Even taking into account Eliot's international consecration as the foremost (Anglo-)American man of letters of the period, or the notoriety of Pound's treason case after World War II, Moore's public acclaim in American letters and society at large as a prize-winning poet, critic, and translator (especially of the Fables of La Fontaine {1954}) in the fifties and sixties is quite remarkable. While still at Bryn Mawr (1905–09), Moore started publishing poetry in student journals. In 1915 and the years immediately following she was already having poems accepted by some of the most interesting avant-garde little magazines at the time: The Egoist, Poetry, Others, Bruno's Weekly, Chimaera, Contact. Between 1921, when her first collection of poetry came out in England, and 1967, when The Complete Poems were published, Moore's bibliography counts more than thirty books, whether of poetry, prose, or translation. By then, too, Moore had been awarded all the major prizes for poetry in the United States, including what Randall Jarrell called her “Triple Crown”: the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, all awarded in 1952. But the real proof of her high public reputation as a verbal artist in the American scene was the invitation she received in 1955 from the Ford Motor Company to propose an attractive and suggestive name for a new series of cars. Moore, who was fascinated by advertising all her life, promptly accepted.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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