WEBVTT 00:01.080 --> 00:04.750 Professor Langdon Hammer: I was wanting to 00:04.748 --> 00:07.268 carry over more Williams today. 00:07.270 --> 00:09.860 Poor Williams, he only got a day, 00:09.856 --> 00:14.056 like Langston Hughes, but it's hard to give everybody 00:14.058 --> 00:17.808 their day. And I think on reflection I'd 00:17.807 --> 00:23.487 rather give two full lectures to Marianne Moore because first of 00:23.492 --> 00:26.292 all, she's a difficult poet. 00:26.290 --> 00:32.030 "Oh good," you're saying, "as opposed to all these other 00:32.026 --> 00:35.676 people." She's difficult in a different 00:35.680 --> 00:40.030 way, and in some ways she doesn't seem difficult, 00:40.030 --> 00:46.660 as you get started, but she's idiosyncratic and I'd 00:46.655 --> 00:54.735 like to give her a chance to get your attention and give you a 00:54.739 --> 00:59.509 chance to learn how to read her. 00:59.510 --> 01:04.210 It also strikes me that we haven't read a lot of women 01:04.211 --> 01:07.051 poets in this course, have we? 01:07.049 --> 01:12.399 We've read H.D., but that's really about it so 01:12.397 --> 01:18.417 far. The giants of modern poetry, 01:18.417 --> 01:25.807 they're men: Yeats, Eliot and company. 01:25.810 --> 01:31.460 Moore has a claim to stature like theirs. 01:31.459 --> 01:37.659 I think she is a remarkable poet, and one who interestingly, 01:37.656 --> 01:43.326 I think, has had as much or perhaps even more practical 01:43.328 --> 01:49.208 influence and effect over the development of poetry since 01:49.209 --> 01:53.479 modernism, as much or more than any of the 01:53.484 --> 01:55.664 poets we've been reading. 01:55.660 --> 02:01.070 The general question of the position of women and of women 02:01.067 --> 02:06.187 poets in modern poetry is interesting and important, 02:06.189 --> 02:10.359 and an important context for thinking about Moore. 02:10.360 --> 02:18.650 Women in the modernist literary culture that we've been studying 02:18.647 --> 02:26.537 are identified very frequently with popular and gentile forms 02:26.541 --> 02:31.411 of writing and taste; think about Hart Crane 02:31.413 --> 02:35.523 complaining to Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry 02:35.518 --> 02:39.188 magazine, as if she's just too square to get it. 02:39.190 --> 02:43.480 This is not an unusual attitude. 02:43.479 --> 02:47.429 Women are associated to a degree with political writing of 02:47.428 --> 02:51.028 the period, certain kinds of experimental writing, 02:51.030 --> 02:57.550 and also above all with the legacy of the nineteenth-century 02:57.554 --> 03:02.184 poetess. James Joyce said The Waste 03:02.177 --> 03:07.997 Land "ended the idea of poetry for ladies"; 03:08.000 --> 03:11.290 this is its achievement. 03:11.290 --> 03:16.950 Poor ladies! Well, you maybe get the idea in 03:16.952 --> 03:23.422 Joyce's comment that here was a poem that broke with a 03:23.419 --> 03:30.739 nineteenth-century culture of poetry that was in certain ways 03:30.739 --> 03:35.409 feminized, at least as imagined here by 03:35.413 --> 03:39.783 Joyce and certainly by other modern poets. 03:39.780 --> 03:45.150 At the same time you can think about the very rich and 03:45.150 --> 03:51.030 complicated role of women in The Waste Land in order 03:51.026 --> 03:56.396 to get some sense of the complexity of the position of 03:56.397 --> 04:00.447 women in modern poetry in general. 04:00.449 --> 04:05.349 Think of the ways in which Eliot as a poet draws on female 04:05.345 --> 04:09.765 speakers and female voices and, you might say, 04:09.768 --> 04:15.218 even aspires to sound like Isolde or Philomel or, 04:15.215 --> 04:21.565 well, one of his own inventions in "The Fire Sermon." 04:21.569 --> 04:26.759 In general, you could say that the modern poets we've been 04:26.757 --> 04:31.487 reading aggressively and self-consciously masculinize 04:31.488 --> 04:35.878 poetry, in particular by trying to 04:35.876 --> 04:42.776 disassociate poetry from what is commercial, polite, 04:42.779 --> 04:47.169 soft, dreamy, ideal, leisured – all 04:47.172 --> 04:54.492 qualities and attitudes gendered in their imagination – and 04:54.492 --> 05:01.692 instead connect poetry to what is technically rigorous, 05:01.689 --> 05:05.689 advanced, learned, unsentimental, 05:05.689 --> 05:11.189 hard, and often hard work: terms that are, 05:11.190 --> 05:14.150 again, clearly gendered. 05:14.149 --> 05:17.139 H.D. in her own distinctive way is 05:17.142 --> 05:20.682 also doing this, taking part in this. 05:20.680 --> 05:26.290 Modern poetry wanted to make poetry culturally central and 05:26.286 --> 05:31.886 powerful, to reposition it, to achieve for it the power to 05:31.892 --> 05:35.042 define and describe culture. 05:35.040 --> 05:38.670 And this was very often, as I'm suggesting, 05:38.674 --> 05:41.794 played out in very gendered terms, 05:41.790 --> 05:49.510 trying to claim for poetry a set of capacities that were 05:49.505 --> 05:56.375 strongly gendered in these poets' imaginations. 05:56.379 --> 05:58.949 At the same time this desire, as I'm saying, 05:58.952 --> 06:02.242 is conflicted and complicated, and we need only think of 06:02.242 --> 06:05.972 Eliot's case, but you could look back to 06:05.965 --> 06:11.995 Yeats's relationship to women speakers, his own complicated 06:11.999 --> 06:16.889 set of identifications with them, and so on. 06:16.889 --> 06:20.269 How does Marianne Moore fit in this? 06:20.269 --> 06:25.329 What did it mean for her to be a modern poet and a woman? 06:25.329 --> 06:30.079 These are questions that I'll take up today, 06:30.081 --> 06:36.271 first of all addressing this question specifically of, 06:36.269 --> 06:40.319 well, what did it mean to write from the position of a woman, 06:40.319 --> 06:43.869 for Moore? And then I want to go on and 06:43.867 --> 06:48.747 talk about Moore as an American poet, which she was 06:48.754 --> 06:54.404 self-consciously, and then to begin to talk about 06:54.396 --> 06:59.626 Moore as a nature poet, which she also was. 06:59.629 --> 07:04.879 Let's get started by looking at one of her earliest 07:04.875 --> 07:09.175 publications, a poem that like many of the 07:09.177 --> 07:14.737 other important early poems by these poets appeared in 07:14.737 --> 07:21.437 Poetry magazine, this time I think in 1919; 07:21.439 --> 07:23.799 I'm not sure, I'll check the date. 07:23.800 --> 07:29.880 I'm talking about the poem called "A Grave" on page 440. 07:29.879 --> 07:36.139 It's a great poem and it's a poem that announces a speaker 07:36.142 --> 07:42.402 that sounds like no one else, and sounds like certainly no 07:42.404 --> 07:45.594 one we have been reading. 07:45.589 --> 07:51.319 Think about "The Seafarer," another poem about the sea. 07:51.320 --> 07:52.590 How did that sound? 07:52.589 --> 07:56.389 "Bitter breast-cares have I abided, nigh on the 07:56.390 --> 08:00.900 night-watch." You remember Pound's sonorous 08:00.895 --> 08:07.425 and even perhaps ponderous, heroic Anglo-Saxon alliterative 08:07.426 --> 08:10.566 meter, which I talked about as, 08:10.574 --> 08:14.494 in Pound's case, a deliberate and interesting 08:14.487 --> 08:19.727 evasion of iambic pentameter norms – blank verse as a kind 08:19.734 --> 08:22.584 of model for heroic speech. 08:22.579 --> 08:24.949 Well, so is this, but it sounds nothing like 08:24.953 --> 08:26.883 that. It's on the other end of the 08:26.876 --> 08:29.026 spectrum, right? It sounds like what? 08:29.030 --> 08:33.960 Prose, in certain ways; a remarkable, 08:33.957 --> 08:39.527 elevated prose, but prose, prose that uses 08:39.532 --> 08:47.012 words like "consciousness" or "volition," "however." 08:47.009 --> 08:51.179 When was the last time you saw a poem that said "however"? 08:51.179 --> 08:55.899 It really announces a speaker who is using a kind of 08:55.895 --> 08:57.925 expository language. 08:57.930 --> 09:02.390 There are Latinate words. 09:02.389 --> 09:08.889 There's obviously no meter and rhyme. 09:08.889 --> 09:14.799 At the same time there is a developed and, 09:14.804 --> 09:22.454 as almost always in Moore, intricate formal design, 09:22.450 --> 09:27.800 an idiosyncratic formal design that is operating in the poem, 09:27.798 --> 09:29.758 but almost secretly. 09:29.760 --> 09:32.370 What's it look like on the page? 09:32.370 --> 09:34.750 A lot of long lines, right? 09:34.750 --> 09:38.090 A lot of long lines, some of which run over. 09:38.090 --> 09:44.430 Well, this, like other Moore poems, is a poem structured 09:44.431 --> 09:49.851 around counting syllables per line and counting, 09:49.850 --> 09:53.310 in fact, numbers of lines. 09:53.309 --> 09:58.269 This is not a kind of formal organization that you hear, 09:58.272 --> 10:03.322 and it's even difficult to see, but it's an operative one for 10:03.320 --> 10:07.820 her and it's one of the ways in which she organizes her verse. 10:07.820 --> 10:12.180 It's as if Moore has in some sense set up her own rules, 10:12.178 --> 10:15.188 clung to them, and kept them secret. 10:15.190 --> 10:16.650 She doesn't always keep them secret; 10:16.649 --> 10:21.759 sometimes they're quite conspicuous and even flashy in 10:21.758 --> 10:24.938 certain poems in their designs. 10:24.940 --> 10:27.560 But here it's quite inconspicuous. 10:27.559 --> 10:32.659 What you have is a poem that is made up of two eleven-line 10:32.662 --> 10:36.962 groups, two eleven-line stanzas or paragraphs, 10:36.960 --> 10:40.230 each beginning with a short seven-syllable line: 10:40.225 --> 10:45.025 "Man looking into the sea," "for their bones have not 10:45.026 --> 10:48.386 lasted." This is the pattern that 10:48.392 --> 10:50.462 structures the poem. 10:50.460 --> 10:54.890 In all these ways that I'm describing – the syllable 10:54.887 --> 11:00.477 count, the expository writing, the Latinate diction, 11:00.483 --> 11:06.473 the self-conscious, prose-like nature of the 11:06.469 --> 11:11.149 language, all those semi-colons – this 11:11.153 --> 11:17.283 is poetry that has distanced itself from traditions of song, 11:17.279 --> 11:22.169 and certainly from nineteenth-century traditions of 11:22.166 --> 11:25.706 versification. The form of the poem is, 11:25.710 --> 11:30.250 again, not something you see or even hear necessarily. 11:30.250 --> 11:33.770 It's there almost as a kind of absence. 11:33.769 --> 11:37.599 Now, there's also, wonderfully, 11:37.595 --> 11:40.905 a certain combativeness. 11:40.909 --> 11:46.069 Moore is a combative and pugnacious poet. 11:46.070 --> 11:52.120 You, again, may not see this immediately because of the 11:52.122 --> 11:58.542 poem's impersonality, the way in which it seems to 11:58.541 --> 12:06.231 present itself and the often intricate forms of syntax or 12:06.225 --> 12:08.965 oblique approach. 12:08.970 --> 12:15.020 But she is a fighter, and this poem is really a kind 12:15.022 --> 12:18.822 of fighting that we're seeing. 12:18.820 --> 12:22.670 The poem begins in irritation. 12:22.669 --> 12:27.409 It begins as a complaint – a complaint that's addressed to 12:27.407 --> 12:29.807 whom? To man; 12:29.810 --> 12:32.720 "Man looking into the sea." 12:32.720 --> 12:38.190 "Man" suggests, well, maybe humankind. 12:38.190 --> 12:41.880 You think about the people on the shore in Frost's poem, 12:41.878 --> 12:45.898 "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep," who are standing there looking 12:45.901 --> 12:47.311 out at the water. 12:47.309 --> 12:51.799 Well, Moore might be addressing them. 12:51.799 --> 12:59.559 But I think there's a more specific and particular "man" 12:59.559 --> 13:05.909 that is the irritant that sets the poem going: 13:05.909 --> 13:08.979 a man, the figure of a man who, 13:08.979 --> 13:12.369 like a romantic poet, has arrogated to himself the 13:12.367 --> 13:17.157 position to take in the view, to stand like the figure in a 13:17.163 --> 13:22.423 Caspar David Friedrich painting and gaze into the sublime. 13:22.419 --> 13:28.309 Meanwhile, Moore is somewhere else. 13:28.310 --> 13:32.990 Where is she? She's somewhere behind him, 13:32.991 --> 13:38.561 because he's blocked her view: "Man looking into the sea, 13:38.559 --> 13:41.589 / taking the view from those who have as much right to it as 13:41.588 --> 13:42.818 you have to yourself." 13:42.820 --> 13:47.820 Well, "it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing," 13:47.816 --> 13:51.226 she says, trying to make sense of this. 13:51.230 --> 13:57.920 Moore has a couple of comments here that describe the origins 13:57.918 --> 14:01.218 of this poem. It's the first quotation on 14:01.223 --> 14:03.063 your handout. She says: 14:03.059 --> 14:07.419 As for "A Grave," it has a significance apart from the 14:07.417 --> 14:11.107 literal origin [but here is the literal origin], 14:11.110 --> 14:15.340 which was a man who placed himself between my mother and 14:15.338 --> 14:19.488 me, and the surf we were watching from the middle ledge 14:19.489 --> 14:23.179 of rocks on Monhegan Island after the storm. 14:23.179 --> 14:25.669 ("Don't be annoyed," my mother said. 14:25.669 --> 14:29.019 "It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.") 14:29.019 --> 14:33.549 It is important that, however, Moore was annoyed. 14:33.549 --> 14:36.559 She was annoyed into poetry, you could say, 14:36.555 --> 14:39.055 and she took her mother with her. 14:39.059 --> 14:44.769 The poem is really written from the perspective of a daughter 14:44.766 --> 14:50.656 and mother, and a daughter with an intimate relationship to her 14:50.662 --> 14:55.492 mother who absorbs, here and very often elsewhere 14:55.486 --> 14:59.576 in her poetry, actual quotations from but even 14:59.578 --> 15:04.758 more importantly a style of speech and attitude associated 15:04.760 --> 15:09.210 with her mother, who talks a lot like Dr. 15:09.207 --> 15:15.227 Samuel Johnson or some other eighteenth-century figure and 15:15.233 --> 15:17.563 moralist like that. 15:17.559 --> 15:22.309 Mrs. Moore is someone whom Marianne 15:22.314 --> 15:26.934 always identified with herself. 15:26.929 --> 15:31.869 It's significant here that Moore is using a quotation from 15:31.865 --> 15:37.055 her mother and not acknowledging it in any particular way, 15:37.059 --> 15:42.769 as if the two women had one voice and one perspective. 15:42.769 --> 15:47.369 The man who blocks their point of view, and blocks their point 15:47.373 --> 15:51.463 of view, you could say, in many senses – their 15:51.459 --> 15:56.869 literal point of view of the water – but also the point of 15:56.866 --> 16:02.086 view he takes in effect ignores and suppresses theirs. 16:02.090 --> 16:05.310 He is standing in the posture, as I suggest, 16:05.308 --> 16:09.568 of a kind of conventional, romantic visionary staring into 16:09.574 --> 16:11.974 the sea, emblem of infinity. 16:11.970 --> 16:16.570 Well, it might be Hart Crane writing "At Melville's Tomb," 16:16.567 --> 16:21.647 although Crane wouldn't write that poem for a few more years; 16:21.649 --> 16:23.519 and when he did, incidentally, 16:23.518 --> 16:27.058 he sent it to Marianne Moore, who was then the editor of 16:27.061 --> 16:29.961 The Dial, who sent it back and rejected 16:29.960 --> 16:32.040 it. Moore's poem is, 16:32.040 --> 16:36.920 in fact, as I suggested, an early poem of hers and an 16:36.916 --> 16:42.356 early act of self-definition that's quite important in both 16:42.355 --> 16:47.885 the impersonality of the point of view and yet the insistent 16:47.887 --> 16:51.917 individuality of that point of view. 16:51.920 --> 16:54.060 Moore's poems are like this. 16:54.059 --> 16:59.429 They seem impersonal and yet they're at the same time deeply 16:59.427 --> 17:02.427 personal and deeply individual. 17:02.429 --> 17:09.019 Here she celebrates the power of the sea to resist the 17:09.017 --> 17:16.347 imposition of the observer's will, or the will of the sailor 17:16.351 --> 17:21.151 or seafarer; you can even think of Odysseus 17:21.145 --> 17:23.105 or Pound's seafarer. 17:23.109 --> 17:28.409 The sea is "a collector, quick to return a rapacious 17:28.406 --> 17:32.666 look": i.e. if you want to take possession 17:32.665 --> 17:37.955 of the sea in some way, well, don't think you can do 17:37.962 --> 17:44.302 that because this is a grander force than you and it will take 17:44.297 --> 17:51.537 you up and drown you, which is what the poem goes on 17:51.544 --> 17:56.124 to describe. The sea has here the force that 17:56.117 --> 18:00.967 it does in other great poems by Moore like "The Fish" or 18:00.974 --> 18:03.274 "Sojourn in the Whale." 18:03.270 --> 18:06.650 It seems to stand for death. 18:06.650 --> 18:12.820 It is a grave; it is a grave in which you 18:12.819 --> 18:16.649 could say a certain idea of romantic and, 18:16.648 --> 18:21.818 I think, specifically male subjectivity is overcome and 18:21.817 --> 18:24.687 buried, shown its limits. 18:24.690 --> 18:31.400 In this poem the human, imagined finally as something 18:31.397 --> 18:36.297 that twists and turns in the depths, 18:36.299 --> 18:42.809 is converted by natural forces into a part of the natural world 18:42.812 --> 18:49.012 that it sought through the man's perspective to dominate. 18:49.010 --> 18:53.710 Moore sent this poem to Pound. 18:53.710 --> 18:56.210 These poets are always sending their poems to Pound. 18:56.210 --> 19:01.470 He responded with admiration in that second quotation there, 19:01.471 --> 19:03.791 and he says: "Thank God, 19:03.789 --> 19:09.199 I think you can be trusted not to pour out a flood (in the 19:09.198 --> 19:12.518 manner of dear Amy and Masters)," 19:12.519 --> 19:18.819 who though not a woman was a sentimental regionalist and not 19:18.815 --> 19:21.905 an international modernist. 19:21.910 --> 19:26.690 Pound is approving of Moore here. 19:26.690 --> 19:33.840 He approves that she does not gush, she does not emote. 19:33.839 --> 19:36.179 She has not written a sentimental poem. 19:36.180 --> 19:40.000 In fact, in certain ways she's written an anti-sentimental 19:40.000 --> 19:43.400 poem. I think it's important that 19:43.402 --> 19:49.812 Moore's rhetorical choices have prevented her from doing so, 19:49.809 --> 19:56.759 that the poem has the kind of formal self-discipline it does. 19:56.759 --> 20:03.229 Again, these are aspects of restraint in the poetry. 20:03.230 --> 20:08.300 Moore is dry in all respects. 20:08.299 --> 20:13.309 At the same time, these are modernist values, 20:13.311 --> 20:18.551 values that Pound would describe in his Imagist 20:18.550 --> 20:21.740 manifesto and elsewhere. 20:21.740 --> 20:27.000 At the same time, Moore gets her dryness not by 20:27.002 --> 20:33.302 disavowing femininity or suppressing it or attacking it, 20:33.295 --> 20:37.295 as one of her peers might have. 20:37.299 --> 20:40.729 She does it, rather, specifically in this 20:40.726 --> 20:43.036 act of challenging "man." 20:43.039 --> 20:52.639 Let me look with you at the letter that Moore wrote to Pound 20:52.635 --> 21:03.365 in response that acts as a kind of, now, letter of introduction. 21:03.369 --> 21:08.119 And it has a lot of interesting things in it and it's probably a 21:08.121 --> 21:11.591 good introduction to who she is for us, too. 21:11.590 --> 21:16.690 She says: I was born in 1887 and 21:16.691 --> 21:20.991 brought up in the home of my grandfather, a clergyman of the 21:20.993 --> 21:22.673 Presbyterian church. 21:22.670 --> 21:27.180 [She comes from a Christian and God-fearing home.] 21:27.178 --> 21:31.778 I am Irish by descent [and that's where some of the 21:31.779 --> 21:36.189 combativeness comes from], possibly Scotch also, 21:36.190 --> 21:39.800 but purely Celtic, was graduated from Bryn Mawr 21:39.804 --> 21:44.524 [where she knew and befriended H.D.]… and taught shorthand, 21:44.518 --> 21:48.668 typewriting…. [She's worked for a living.] 21:48.665 --> 21:51.975 In 1916 my mother [Mary Warner Moore] 21:51.975 --> 21:57.305 and I left home in Carlisle to be with… [her brother, 21:57.309 --> 21:59.459 a] Chaplain of the battleship 21:59.458 --> 22:03.768 Rhode Island…. [There's a lot of Christianity 22:03.773 --> 22:07.083 in the family. She says that she's living with 22:07.077 --> 22:10.217 her mother in New York, and indeed she would spend the 22:10.219 --> 22:13.479 rest of her life living with her mother in New York, 22:13.480 --> 22:17.900 in Greenwich Village and in Brooklyn in a small apartment.] 22:17.900 --> 22:23.020 [C]ontrary to your impression, I am altogether blond and have 22:23.017 --> 22:26.627 red hair. [Pound had asked whether she 22:26.625 --> 22:30.795 was Ethiopian, after he read the poem "Black 22:30.795 --> 22:36.805 Earth": read "Black Earth" and decide whether Marianne Moore is 22:36.807 --> 22:40.517 an Ethiopian.] [This is important. 22:40.519 --> 22:43.179 She says] …Any verse that I have 22:43.183 --> 22:48.353 written, has been an arrangement of stanzas, each stanza being an 22:48.349 --> 22:51.739 exact duplicate of every other stanza. 22:51.740 --> 22:55.190 [This is not always true but she claims it is.] 22:55.185 --> 22:59.525 I have occasionally been at pains to make an arrangement of 22:59.529 --> 23:03.049 lines and rhymes that I like repeat itself, 23:03.049 --> 23:06.529 but the form of the original stanza of anything I have 23:06.531 --> 23:09.291 written has been a matter of expediency, 23:09.289 --> 23:14.079 hit upon as being approximately suitable to the subject matter. 23:14.079 --> 23:17.099 The resemblance of my progress to your beginnings is an 23:17.096 --> 23:18.266 accident…. 23:18.269 --> 23:22.199 "I wasn't influenced by you, Pound, when I started writing 23:22.195 --> 23:25.975 syllabic verse" because Pound had experimented with this 23:25.983 --> 23:29.003 himself. There're a couple of ideas here 23:29.004 --> 23:30.424 that are important. 23:30.420 --> 23:33.740 First of all, that Moore identifies, 23:33.737 --> 23:38.667 as it were, two moments of creativity involved in the 23:38.665 --> 23:40.935 making of her poems. 23:40.940 --> 23:47.110 One is a moment of spontaneity and expediency in which lines, 23:47.107 --> 23:51.627 almost like some kind of channeled speech, 23:51.630 --> 23:56.990 arrive in a certain form, and then she makes that form in 23:56.989 --> 24:01.869 its contingency and accidentalness repeat itself. 24:01.869 --> 24:10.879 She goes on and what came by chance she repeats through will, 24:10.877 --> 24:14.027 through discipline. 24:14.029 --> 24:22.469 This is significant and it's related to, well, 24:22.467 --> 24:32.027 her originality of form, which is something that, 24:32.029 --> 24:36.679 as it were, comes to her naturally and that she builds on 24:36.684 --> 24:40.514 self-consciously and through a kind of rigorous 24:40.507 --> 24:43.407 self-discipline. She says then, 24:43.413 --> 24:45.103 "I do not appear." 24:45.099 --> 24:48.889 She meant, "I don't appear in literary periodicals; 24:48.890 --> 24:51.330 you can't find my poems anywhere." 24:51.329 --> 24:56.349 But the sentence itself is wonderfully suggestive and 24:56.354 --> 24:59.064 simple, "I do not appear." 24:59.059 --> 25:03.169 And in fact, Moore does not appear very much 25:03.174 --> 25:06.794 in her poems. She is interestingly 25:06.794 --> 25:11.494 backgrounded or even invisible in her poems, 25:11.491 --> 25:15.861 in the ways that she is in "A Grave." 25:15.860 --> 25:19.270 And then she says: I grow less and less 25:19.268 --> 25:23.298 desirous of being published, produce less and have a strong 25:23.303 --> 25:27.063 feeling for letting alone what little I do produce. 25:27.059 --> 25:31.569 [And then she continues] …To capitalize the first word 25:31.566 --> 25:35.246 of every line is rather slavish [as they do in 25:35.254 --> 25:39.684 nineteenth-century poetry] and I have substituted small 25:39.678 --> 25:44.188 letters for capitals in the enclosed versions of the two 25:44.185 --> 25:46.475 poems that you have. 25:46.480 --> 25:51.570 [This is another sort of distinctive, formal choice Moore 25:51.571 --> 25:56.941 makes, not to capitalize her first lines--something Williams 25:56.936 --> 26:00.726 does, too.] …In "A Graveyard," [she goes 26:00.730 --> 26:05.430 on, now talking about the poem "A Grave" (a grave is better 26:05.429 --> 26:08.429 than a graveyard, don't you think?)] 26:08.426 --> 26:11.556 [the change] that I have made is to end of 26:11.562 --> 26:14.162 the line [the very end of the poem] 26:14.162 --> 26:17.912 as you suggest and for the sake of symmetry, 26:17.910 --> 26:22.450 have altered the arrangement of lines in the preceding stanzas. 26:22.450 --> 26:27.140 I realize that by writing consciousness and volition [this 26:27.144 --> 26:32.254 is the order of the words that Pound had proposed at the end of 26:32.251 --> 26:35.461 that poem] emphasis is obtained which is 26:35.463 --> 26:40.573 sacrificed by retaining the order which I have [that is, 26:40.569 --> 26:43.029 Moore's order, "volition" and then 26:43.032 --> 26:46.392 "consciousness"], and I am willing to make the 26:46.389 --> 26:49.279 change, though I prefer the original 26:49.283 --> 26:51.953 order [which, in fact, ultimately she 26:51.949 --> 26:55.519 kept]. Let's look at the end of the 26:55.523 --> 27:03.323 poem again. I'll read from line 20: 27:03.319 --> 27:06.709 Pound said, "Well, that ending just doesn't quite 27:06.705 --> 27:08.575 do it. Why don't you switch 27:08.579 --> 27:10.739 'consciousness' and 'volition'?" 27:10.740 --> 27:12.690 With what implication? 27:12.690 --> 27:19.160 That somehow "volition" is more important than "consciousness," 27:19.155 --> 27:25.405 that it's the last thing to go and the most dramatic thing to 27:25.411 --> 27:27.531 lose. Moore, however, 27:27.534 --> 27:30.224 insists: no, that's not the case; 27:30.220 --> 27:32.070 it's the other way around. 27:32.069 --> 27:35.039 "Consciousness" is more important than "volition." 27:35.039 --> 27:37.799 In fact, that's really what this whole poem is about, 27:37.800 --> 27:41.820 you could say. Pound wanted the emphasis, 27:41.818 --> 27:47.418 to take Moore's word, that comes with stressing 27:47.423 --> 27:51.813 "volition" as most important and, 27:51.809 --> 27:55.359 in fact, volition is nothing but a kind of expression of 27:55.359 --> 27:57.199 emphasis. She says no, 27:57.196 --> 28:01.886 "consciousness" is more important, and as she does, 28:01.889 --> 28:03.859 she emphasizes it. 28:03.859 --> 28:09.899 She introduces another kind of emphasis, one associated not 28:09.904 --> 28:16.054 specifically with volition so much as the drama and power of 28:16.054 --> 28:23.224 consciousness, which she insists on here. 28:23.220 --> 28:30.580 Although Moore's poem could be, in fact, read as a kind of 28:30.584 --> 28:38.084 rebuke in advance to Hart Crane and his poem "At Melville's 28:38.077 --> 28:40.537 Tomb," Moore, in fact, 28:40.541 --> 28:43.821 got to know and like Crane in the twenties, 28:43.819 --> 28:48.349 sometimes acting as his editor when he sent poems to The 28:48.347 --> 28:50.687 Dial for publication. 28:50.690 --> 28:53.310 She turned back "At Melville's Tomb." 28:53.310 --> 28:55.210 She accepted other poems. 28:55.210 --> 28:59.680 One poem she accepted, "The Wine Menagerie," was a 28:59.683 --> 29:01.513 poem in quatrains. 29:01.509 --> 29:05.589 She accepted it and then converted the poem into free 29:05.585 --> 29:08.715 verse and reduced it by half its size. 29:08.720 --> 29:13.630 Crane accepted it, accepted this publication along 29:13.625 --> 29:17.225 with ten dollars, which he needed. 29:17.230 --> 29:22.660 But both Crane and Moore, like Williams, 29:22.658 --> 29:28.088 were, I think, self-consciously American 29:28.087 --> 29:31.617 poets, and their American-ness is 29:31.622 --> 29:36.322 important to how they define themselves as modern poets. 29:36.319 --> 29:42.149 And there is really in all of them a certain kind of 29:42.151 --> 29:49.361 combative, cultural nationalism, which has aesthetic and ethical 29:49.356 --> 29:52.756 implications. As an example, 29:52.760 --> 29:58.500 let's turn a page back and look at the poem "England." 29:58.500 --> 30:06.820 Okay, the poem begins here as a series of national caricatures 30:06.819 --> 30:14.729 and then eventually it will move from these caricatures, 30:14.730 --> 30:19.810 which suggest ways of life and also aesthetic dispositions, 30:19.813 --> 30:24.023 ways of doing and thinking about art, I think; 30:24.019 --> 30:28.289 she'll move from that to talk about America, 30:28.293 --> 30:30.583 and what is American. 30:30.579 --> 30:33.859 And this is, you could say, 30:33.855 --> 30:36.875 her real subject here. 30:36.880 --> 30:42.000 And then she will go on and describe America. 30:42.000 --> 30:46.820 She will go on and contrast everything that she has just 30:46.815 --> 30:51.625 caricatured in a polite but essentially negative way, 30:51.630 --> 30:56.490 in each of those cases, with the American, 30:56.485 --> 31:03.705 and specifically with American speech and American English. 31:03.710 --> 31:06.410 In other words, just because Americans who say 31:06.414 --> 31:09.664 "psalm" or "calm" sound like that instead of "psalm" or 31:09.659 --> 31:11.859 "calm," that doesn't mean they're 31:11.862 --> 31:14.272 stupid or that the rest of America is. 31:14.269 --> 31:17.299 In other words, if you don't think you can get 31:17.303 --> 31:20.003 poetry in America, you haven't looked. 31:20.000 --> 31:21.870 It's a wonderful poem. 31:21.869 --> 31:27.659 It's a defense of America and American creativity, 31:27.657 --> 31:30.017 American language. 31:30.019 --> 31:34.939 It is an attack on Eurocentric, cultural snobs. 31:34.940 --> 31:40.120 At the same time, Moore is not only or merely 31:40.115 --> 31:45.285 adding America as one among other nations. 31:45.289 --> 31:51.439 Rather, America is the locality where this principle of hers is 31:51.437 --> 31:56.887 honored, a place that incorporates many other places, 31:56.890 --> 32:01.770 many other cultures, many other ways of feeling and 32:01.768 --> 32:04.108 thinking and speaking. 32:04.109 --> 32:07.749 This principle, the idea that inspiration has 32:07.748 --> 32:10.888 never been confined to one locality, 32:10.890 --> 32:14.590 to one place, affirms a kind of art that is 32:14.586 --> 32:18.896 not only a matter of high culture but that is also 32:18.899 --> 32:22.819 vernacular, regional, heterogeneous, 32:22.815 --> 32:28.435 popular, and includes in it all kinds of materials. 32:28.440 --> 32:34.600 And you remember the quotation I pointed to in the first day of 32:34.595 --> 32:39.455 class when I quoted from Moore's poem "Poetry"? 32:39.460 --> 32:43.460 And she was talking about all the things that should go in 32:43.455 --> 32:47.025 poetry, even business documents and school books. 32:47.029 --> 32:51.049 Well, America is a place where you can put those things in 32:51.046 --> 32:54.196 poems. This is a proud, 32:54.204 --> 32:58.424 also a comical principle. 32:58.420 --> 33:01.340 It's a democratic principle for Moore. 33:01.340 --> 33:06.040 Is it maybe also a feminist one? 33:06.039 --> 33:12.939 I think so, in so far as Moore defines what is American as 33:12.940 --> 33:20.570 specifically and distinctively a non-hierarchical point of view: 33:20.567 --> 33:24.607 that is, not so much a woman's point of 33:24.607 --> 33:29.777 view so much as a point of view that accommodates that of the 33:29.782 --> 33:34.262 woman among others, within a multiplicity of human 33:34.261 --> 33:37.271 perspectives and, in fact, non-human 33:37.273 --> 33:41.643 perspectives. She's serious about including 33:41.636 --> 33:43.796 those cats and dogs. 33:43.799 --> 33:46.679 Why is the poem called "England"? 33:46.680 --> 33:52.230 By incorporating the title into the first line of the poem, 33:52.231 --> 33:55.391 Moore makes it seem accidental. 33:55.390 --> 34:03.190 The device foregrounds Moore's concision and practicality. 34:03.190 --> 34:07.190 Why waste any extra words on the title? 34:07.190 --> 34:10.790 Pound wants you to use no word that does not contribute to the 34:10.785 --> 34:15.135 presentation; okay, then we'll make the title 34:15.139 --> 34:18.609 part of the presentation, too. 34:18.610 --> 34:25.520 The gesture is also of a piece, I think, with Moore's distrust 34:25.518 --> 34:28.008 of hierarchy itself. 34:28.010 --> 34:32.140 She says, in effect, the title is not more important 34:32.135 --> 34:34.395 than the rest of the poem. 34:34.400 --> 34:39.640 It doesn't stand outside it or above it, it's just part of it; 34:39.639 --> 34:44.439 just as Moore found it slavish and probably pretentious to 34:44.437 --> 34:48.727 capitalize the first word of every line of verse. 34:48.730 --> 34:51.250 She wants to, in that sense, 34:51.254 --> 34:56.494 give dignity to the lowercase, to non-capital letters. 34:56.489 --> 35:01.809 At the same time Moore is very wily and clever. 35:01.809 --> 35:06.269 England really is important here; 35:06.269 --> 35:10.409 that is, it's not merely the first nation in an arbitrarily 35:10.408 --> 35:13.498 arranged list. She's defending America and 35:13.495 --> 35:17.885 American English specifically against the noted superiority of 35:17.890 --> 35:22.140 England and English literature, where of course Pound, 35:22.142 --> 35:26.892 Eliot, Frost and others had gone to establish themselves as 35:26.892 --> 35:30.452 poets. And to this extent she's saying 35:30.451 --> 35:35.371 that the title is not so important that it stands above 35:35.367 --> 35:38.587 the poem; England is not so important 35:38.587 --> 35:41.657 that it stands over and above America. 35:41.659 --> 35:45.539 And in this sense the title, in fact, turns out to be 35:45.541 --> 35:49.201 important and to give us important information, 35:49.199 --> 35:55.229 because she's out here to make England less important and to 35:55.227 --> 35:58.187 deny it its pride of place. 35:58.190 --> 36:05.990 Well, we've got just a few minutes left to start a long, 36:05.986 --> 36:14.206 difficult and truly marvelous poem called "An Octopus" that 36:14.208 --> 36:22.858 exemplifies Moore as a nature poet and exemplifies many of the 36:22.856 --> 36:28.806 distinctive features of her writing. 36:28.810 --> 36:32.420 Again, this is on page 441. 36:32.420 --> 36:38.530 The title of the poem is the first line. 36:38.530 --> 36:43.260 We might think that this is going to be a poem about an 36:43.255 --> 36:46.835 octopus. Well, not exactly. 36:46.840 --> 36:54.380 In effect, the title is a kind of riddle that the poem will go 36:54.378 --> 36:58.208 on and explain and expand on. 36:58.210 --> 37:03.740 It's a poem about Mount Rainier, Mount Rainier where 37:03.744 --> 37:08.414 Moore went with her brother John in 1922, 37:08.409 --> 37:12.859 that same year that Joyce published Ulysses and 37:12.862 --> 37:17.572 Eliot ended the idea of poetry for ladies in The Waste 37:17.567 --> 37:21.607 Land. The poem involves a kind of 37:21.609 --> 37:28.599 essential contradiction which it works through in complex ways. 37:28.599 --> 37:33.469 On the one hand, the mountain that Moore calls 37:33.472 --> 37:40.182 an octopus, that she's writing about here, is something that is 37:40.184 --> 37:43.584 exactly "other." It's outside the poet; 37:43.579 --> 37:48.299 it's out there, like the sea in "A Grave." 37:48.300 --> 37:51.560 It's objectified; it's something Moore has to 37:51.560 --> 37:55.620 stand apart from, perhaps try to conquer in the 37:55.616 --> 38:00.906 form of climbing it or conquer in the form of representing it 38:00.906 --> 38:05.006 in her writing. And yet, in the course of the 38:05.009 --> 38:09.369 poem, the mountain and its glacier, which is really the 38:09.365 --> 38:12.265 octopus that she's talking about, 38:12.269 --> 38:17.869 is something that Moore identifies herself with, 38:17.865 --> 38:23.575 that comes to look like Moore in certain ways. 38:23.579 --> 38:30.019 It comes to be identified with the force of her art. 38:30.019 --> 38:35.579 So, it's both a kind of version of herself and it's a version of 38:35.582 --> 38:37.792 something "other," too. 38:37.789 --> 38:44.179 The poem is filled with an extraordinary and bewildering 38:44.175 --> 38:51.025 detail that evokes the natural world as one of extraordinary 38:51.025 --> 38:54.155 and bewildering detail. 38:54.159 --> 38:59.159 At the same time, it combines and creates a 38:59.160 --> 39:06.780 fantastic collage of quotation from a wild variety of sources. 39:06.780 --> 39:13.250 It's hard to know where to start and stop in this poem, 39:13.252 --> 39:15.772 what its parts are. 39:15.769 --> 39:19.429 It's a question that, in a sense, Moore is asking 39:19.433 --> 39:21.573 about the mountain itself. 39:21.570 --> 39:26.050 There's in general a kind of analogy throughout the poem 39:26.052 --> 39:30.292 between the mountain and the woman who admires it, 39:30.289 --> 39:34.609 whose mind itself can seem octopus-like, 39:34.611 --> 39:41.371 and reaches out in these long tentacle-like lines to grasp the 39:41.371 --> 39:44.041 world, make it her own, 39:44.042 --> 39:49.702 freeze it in poetic language, even while she's insisting on 39:49.704 --> 39:53.614 the wonderful otherness of the world. 39:53.610 --> 39:59.190 I won't start reading now at the end of class but let me say 39:59.194 --> 40:05.164 a couple of further things about the poem and ask you to re-read 40:05.157 --> 40:10.407 it, and to, knowing that it's hard, 40:10.405 --> 40:18.535 re-read it more than once, and maybe not continuously. 40:18.539 --> 40:21.559 It's a very hard poem to read continuously. 40:21.559 --> 40:26.009 Be sure to read the last paragraph of it carefully that 40:26.009 --> 40:27.739 begins on page 444. 40:27.739 --> 40:34.609 And let me say something before we stop about quotation. 40:34.610 --> 40:43.180 You remember that the sea in "A Grave" mocked the rapacious 40:43.177 --> 40:47.637 collector. Moore herself was a great 40:47.637 --> 40:50.057 collector. She collected, 40:50.061 --> 40:52.901 among other things, quotations. 40:52.900 --> 40:58.330 She engrosses them; she gathers them to her; 40:58.330 --> 41:05.960 she masters her reading. 41:05.960 --> 41:10.130 She brings them into this poem in, as I say, 41:10.130 --> 41:12.070 a kind of collage. 41:12.070 --> 41:17.060 It gives the poem a kind of, well, a very strange 41:17.060 --> 41:20.990 polyvocality. There's many, many voices here. 41:20.990 --> 41:22.500 Think of The Waste Land. 41:22.500 --> 41:25.740 Well, Moore rivals it in this poem; 41:25.739 --> 41:30.729 many voices that again democratically allow for, 41:30.732 --> 41:34.562 you could say, multiple perspectives, 41:34.556 --> 41:37.846 multiple kinds of material. 41:37.849 --> 41:44.519 Unlike The Waste Land, Moore is not quoting only high 41:44.518 --> 41:49.828 art sources by and large; well, Eliot has his popular 41:49.831 --> 41:53.261 culture, too, but we know that it's pretty 41:53.264 --> 41:55.614 much a high culture poem. 41:55.610 --> 41:59.770 Well, Moore is making her poem out of magazines, 41:59.770 --> 42:04.550 out of a pamphlet from The National Parks Portfolio, 42:04.550 --> 42:11.880 through her reading in Ruskin and many other sources. 42:11.880 --> 42:16.060 And it treats those various texts, you could say, 42:16.064 --> 42:20.074 non-hierarchically, without a kind of regard to 42:20.074 --> 42:22.084 generic valuations. 42:22.079 --> 42:26.699 She doesn't play off high and low as Eliot does in "A Game of 42:26.697 --> 42:28.387 Chess," for example. 42:28.389 --> 42:33.359 It makes the sources of poetic language and of poetry 42:33.360 --> 42:39.000 continuous with ordinary life, her activities of reading; 42:39.000 --> 42:43.590 and at the same time, it makes Moore's inspiration 42:43.591 --> 42:47.811 deeply personal, because who else but Marianne 42:47.808 --> 42:51.648 Moore would have read all this stuff, 42:51.650 --> 42:54.770 or just these things? 42:54.769 --> 43:03.579 Like Pound, a kind of visionary scholar who found his muse in a 43:03.580 --> 43:09.250 translated Homer, Moore, knowing that literary 43:09.254 --> 43:13.824 inspiration is not confined to any locality, 43:13.822 --> 43:18.712 finds it all over the place in her reading. 43:18.710 --> 43:21.930 But again, what she's reading is something different from 43:21.933 --> 43:25.153 Eliot and Pound. And I'll say more about that 43:25.145 --> 43:25.995 next time.