WEBVTT 00:00.690 --> 00:04.260 Professor Langdon Hammer: Let's see, 00:04.258 --> 00:09.438 last time I wanted to talk to you about Moore as a woman poet, 00:09.441 --> 00:13.351 as an American poet, and as a nature poet. 00:13.350 --> 00:18.240 I didn't get very far with the latter. 00:18.240 --> 00:23.590 I started talking about that long, really tough poem, 00:23.587 --> 00:27.287 "An Octopus," about Mount Rainier. 00:27.290 --> 00:32.350 I'd like to go back there and to work through a little bit of 00:32.349 --> 00:34.119 that poem with you. 00:34.120 --> 00:43.880 I suggested that this octopus that Moore is writing about, 00:43.883 --> 00:51.423 this mountain, is at once something other, 00:51.420 --> 00:54.920 something out there, and an emblem of the power of 00:54.921 --> 00:56.351 the natural world. 00:56.350 --> 01:00.490 And on the other hand, something that Moore identifies 01:00.489 --> 01:04.709 with: certain qualities of the mountain – its energy, 01:04.706 --> 01:07.966 its force. The image of the octopus 01:07.966 --> 01:11.846 itself, the glacier on top of Mount Rainier, 01:11.849 --> 01:14.739 has, I think, sort of eight arms, 01:14.738 --> 01:18.438 and that's what she is playing with. 01:18.439 --> 01:21.709 And I suggested that there's something octopus-like about 01:21.713 --> 01:23.003 Marianne Moore, too, 01:23.000 --> 01:28.830 with those long lines that snake out and seem to grasp onto 01:28.829 --> 01:35.379 all sorts of stuff, producing this poetry of 01:35.377 --> 01:40.737 collage and multiple voices. 01:40.739 --> 01:44.879 Let me see if I can work through the end of the poem with 01:44.876 --> 01:49.486 you, from around; well, there's a long last 01:49.490 --> 01:56.170 stanza, or paragraph, whatever you would like to call 01:56.167 --> 02:03.227 it, that begins on page 444 at the bottom, line 161. 02:03.230 --> 02:10.320 Moore is talking about here, maybe confusingly or 02:10.322 --> 02:19.482 unhelpfully, Greek aesthetics, while she's also talking about 02:19.479 --> 02:28.039 the creatures and people that inhabit this place that she's 02:28.044 --> 02:32.774 writing about, Mount Rainier. 02:32.770 --> 02:39.690 She says on the middle of page 445 about the Greeks--it's hard 02:39.690 --> 02:42.640 to quote from this poem. 02:42.639 --> 02:46.179 It's hard to enter it at any point because each thing is 02:46.175 --> 02:49.515 connected to the other, and to make sense of anything 02:49.518 --> 02:51.188 you have to work back. 02:51.190 --> 02:57.260 She says: Well, how do you approach 02:57.257 --> 03:00.347 nature? In a sense, that's the great 03:00.347 --> 03:01.757 question of the poem. 03:01.759 --> 03:06.549 Here, the brochure is telling us, well, we shouldn't approach 03:06.553 --> 03:09.113 it with guns, nets, et cetera; 03:09.110 --> 03:12.080 we won't be welcome there. 03:12.080 --> 03:16.980 Moore is going to develop this idea a little bit further. 03:16.979 --> 03:22.499 She says, in a sense, why bother putting all that 03:22.504 --> 03:26.094 down? Moore prodigiously includes 03:26.091 --> 03:31.961 these quotations from a hiking handbook, and then includes 03:31.964 --> 03:37.944 lyrical language like "this fossil flower concise without a 03:37.940 --> 03:41.380 shiver," shifting between these 03:41.380 --> 03:46.440 registers of diction, and then sees the mountain as, 03:46.440 --> 03:50.370 in that sense, as some kind of special flower 03:50.368 --> 03:52.688 "intact when it is cut." 03:52.690 --> 03:56.040 And then she calls the mountain "damned for its sacrosanct 03:56.037 --> 04:00.287 remoteness"; that is, she's saying people 04:00.285 --> 04:07.745 damn this mountain because it's too high and far and remote to 04:07.748 --> 04:11.698 climb. "Sacrosanct remoteness": 04:11.702 --> 04:15.032 that's a suggestive phrase. 04:15.030 --> 04:21.350 It would seem to imply that the mountain was being damned for 04:21.348 --> 04:27.348 possibly what we would recognize as ethical qualities in a 04:27.351 --> 04:30.981 person; that is, some kind of eliteness 04:30.979 --> 04:34.899 and some kind of reserve; in fact, properties that you 04:34.898 --> 04:38.598 might find in an author "like Henry James's damned by the 04:38.595 --> 04:42.935 public for decorum.'" Here, Moore makes a strange and 04:42.941 --> 04:47.841 wild association between the mountain and Henry James, 04:47.839 --> 04:53.789 as if the mountain were somehow a kind of image of that great 04:53.787 --> 04:59.387 early modernist prose writer, "damned by the public for 04:59.388 --> 05:03.588 decorum"; that is, damned for his elite 05:03.587 --> 05:08.637 posture, the demands he placed upon the reader, 05:08.643 --> 05:13.483 and his high level of decorum in writing. 05:13.480 --> 05:18.390 And then she corrects herself, she says: "not decorum, 05:18.393 --> 05:22.423 but restraint." That's what James exemplifies 05:22.417 --> 05:26.297 and that's what the mountain, it seems, exacts, 05:26.299 --> 05:27.699 too. She continues, 05:27.699 --> 05:30.069 and now she's talking about Henry James. 05:30.069 --> 05:34.259 it is the love of [well, and moving out of Henry James 05:34.255 --> 05:36.305 into a general principle] 05:36.311 --> 05:42.121 doing hard things [whether it's climbing the mountain or reading 05:42.119 --> 05:45.389 late James] that rebuffed and wore them out 05:45.389 --> 05:49.219 [the public]--a public out of sympathy with neatness. 05:49.220 --> 05:53.790 "Neatness." She arrives here, 05:53.794 --> 05:59.054 substituting one term for another: first "remoteness," 05:59.046 --> 06:03.216 then "decorum;" not "decorum" but "restraint;" 06:03.220 --> 06:07.330 not "restraint" precisely, necessarily or only, 06:07.329 --> 06:11.259 but "neatness," a kind of ascetic quality. 06:11.260 --> 06:13.960 "Neatness of finish! 06:13.960 --> 06:16.760 Neatness of finish!" 06:16.759 --> 06:21.229 she says, she exclaims, those two exclamation points 06:21.225 --> 06:25.335 following as if, well, how does she say them? 06:25.339 --> 06:28.909 Is it in a spirit of exasperation with this public 06:28.908 --> 06:33.418 that's worn out by the demands placed on them by a certain kind 06:33.424 --> 06:36.924 of writing or by a certain kind of mountain? 06:36.920 --> 06:45.330 Is she here mocking the idea of "neatness of finish" or raising 06:45.326 --> 06:50.746 it as a kind of banner and battle cry? 06:50.750 --> 06:56.490 Now she moves back again to the mountain. 06:56.490 --> 07:02.340 Relentless accuracy [and here she'll name it "the 07:02.339 --> 07:04.939 octopus" again] is the 07:04.940 --> 07:08.750 nature of this octopus with its capacity for 07:08.750 --> 07:12.070 fact. She's talking about the 07:12.074 --> 07:16.604 mountain, but the mountain itself seems now to be the 07:16.604 --> 07:20.094 embodiment of a certain kind of mind, 07:20.089 --> 07:26.349 a certain kind of imagination that grasps at and absorbs and 07:26.346 --> 07:29.206 comes to assimilate fact. 07:29.209 --> 07:38.689 And then she will turn herself over in these closing lines to a 07:38.685 --> 07:47.235 series of quotations that describe the mountain and do so 07:47.244 --> 07:56.414 with a lyric exultation that climbs to the romantic "sublime" 07:56.414 --> 08:03.754 and does so in this strange collage form: 08:03.750 --> 08:10.140 It's an extraordinary kind of celebration and declaration, 08:10.143 --> 08:16.763 a celebration of the frankly savage forces that the mountain 08:16.760 --> 08:21.920 both embodies and endures at its altitude. 08:21.920 --> 08:28.400 And as she does, she suggests that there are 08:28.401 --> 08:36.691 similar forces of primal violence and intensity that are 08:36.692 --> 08:46.492 contained and indeed expressed in the writing of Henry James, 08:46.490 --> 08:52.460 in the aesthetic project of restraint that she herself 08:52.455 --> 08:59.545 engages in and that she calls us to and calls "the love of doing 08:59.546 --> 09:03.526 hard things," whether that's climbing a 09:03.532 --> 09:05.772 mountain or reading poems. 09:05.769 --> 09:12.709 This closing passage is so powerful and interesting because 09:12.706 --> 09:19.516 Moore moves from a kind of writing which is often ascribed 09:19.523 --> 09:25.373 to her or identified with her, that is, description: 09:25.368 --> 09:28.758 precise observation of the natural world, 09:28.757 --> 09:33.327 a kind of writing that is frequently seen as limited in 09:33.332 --> 09:36.892 its ambition and its emotional power, 09:36.889 --> 09:42.259 but that, amassed here in this sequence, in fact, 09:42.260 --> 09:48.750 takes on a kind of remarkable force and lyric intensity. 09:48.750 --> 09:55.830 It makes Moore seem not at all like the restrained or prudish, 09:55.828 --> 10:02.558 virginal poet that many of her peers and subsequent readers 10:02.558 --> 10:05.458 have found her to be. 10:05.460 --> 10:10.010 10:10.009 --> 10:14.459 The fastidiousness, decorum, restraint---these 10:14.457 --> 10:20.087 aesthetic and ethical values in short are here attached to 10:20.091 --> 10:25.921 powers and intensity that we don't ordinarily associate with 10:25.922 --> 10:27.012 them. 10:27.010 --> 10:30.760 10:30.759 --> 10:33.429 The volcano, its whiteness, 10:33.433 --> 10:37.853 that's important: "the white volcano with no 10:37.854 --> 10:43.614 weather side" because the weather side of the volcano has 10:43.611 --> 10:47.931 been broken off in an ancient blast. 10:47.929 --> 10:55.919 The volcano signifies a kind of virginal force. 10:55.919 --> 11:02.309 It is a specifically female version of elemental power and 11:02.311 --> 11:07.471 of the Sublime, of Emersonian self-reliance, 11:07.470 --> 11:15.000 that comes to Moore via Emily Dickinson, who has her volcanoes 11:14.999 --> 11:17.549 too. Self-reliance: 11:17.548 --> 11:23.618 by "self-reliance" I mean Moore's hardy American 11:23.619 --> 11:29.689 insistence on self-sufficiency, on independence, 11:29.690 --> 11:32.790 and on originality. 11:32.789 --> 11:35.899 And she is, again, the most radically original of 11:35.898 --> 11:39.328 all the poets we read, the least like anybody else, 11:39.330 --> 11:46.970 and this, interestingly, despite her reliance on 11:46.971 --> 11:53.151 quotation as her distinctive medium. 11:53.149 --> 12:01.419 There's a powerful tradition of American romanticism that's 12:01.423 --> 12:08.273 present in Moore, with feminist ramifications. 12:08.269 --> 12:14.369 And it's interestingly in Moore joined to a modernist and 12:14.369 --> 12:18.399 Eliotic aesthetic of impersonality, 12:18.399 --> 12:24.289 which we've seen defined in Eliot's essay on "Tradition and 12:24.289 --> 12:28.249 the Individual Talent" and elsewhere. 12:28.250 --> 12:33.820 Eliot's modernist aesthetics were attractive to Moore, 12:33.824 --> 12:39.404 I think, in part because Eliot's idea of impersonality 12:39.398 --> 12:43.498 was compatible with female modesty, 12:43.500 --> 12:46.940 with Christian virtue. 12:46.940 --> 12:54.110 Let me turn to another poem, a poem in your RIS packet, 12:54.109 --> 13:00.349 as helpfully concise as "An Octopus" is long. 13:00.350 --> 13:02.240 And that's the poem "Silence." 13:02.240 --> 13:11.990 And you'll hear a kind of echo of the lines I just read. 13:11.990 --> 13:15.960 Another, I think, powerful poem. 13:15.960 --> 13:22.420 We saw Moore correct herself in "An Octopus," saying "not 13:22.424 --> 13:25.314 decorum but restraint." 13:25.309 --> 13:30.379 Here she says "not in silence, but restraint." 13:30.379 --> 13:36.199 "The deepest feeling," she says, "shows itself" in 13:36.195 --> 13:41.075 restraint. "Shows itself" in restraint: 13:41.082 --> 13:47.022 somehow the very act of restraint is allied to an 13:47.019 --> 13:51.099 expressive act of self-disclosure, 13:51.100 --> 13:54.440 paradoxically perhaps. 13:54.440 --> 14:01.510 The keys to our deep identity are disclosed in some of the 14:01.511 --> 14:05.731 ways in which they are withheld. 14:05.730 --> 14:11.200 This is a theme from one of the poems behind this poem, 14:11.196 --> 14:15.646 which I've quoted for you on your handout, 14:15.649 --> 14:19.449 from Longfellow, from his poem of grief called 14:19.448 --> 14:22.908 "Resignation": "by silence sanctifying, 14:22.909 --> 14:27.709 not concealing, / the grief that must have 14:27.710 --> 14:30.860 way." Moore's writing, 14:30.858 --> 14:37.838 though remote in form from Longfellow or Emerson, 14:37.844 --> 14:43.404 for that matter, or Holmes, another poet we'll 14:43.400 --> 14:48.210 look at later today, is nonetheless deeply involved 14:48.211 --> 14:52.061 in nineteenth-century American poems. 14:52.059 --> 15:00.979 Here, the poem's silence itself seems to be an example of what 15:00.979 --> 15:07.049 it's talking about; that is, it reveals something 15:07.049 --> 15:11.909 about Moore silently through what is not said, 15:11.909 --> 15:18.459 or rather through the ways that what is said gestures towards 15:18.461 --> 15:23.341 what is not. It's a poem that presumes to 15:23.341 --> 15:29.211 speak or presents itself as speaking for the poet, 15:29.206 --> 15:31.956 in the first person. 15:31.960 --> 15:37.690 "My father used to say"; well, curiously Moore is really 15:37.689 --> 15:44.999 not in at least an explicit way speaking about her father or 15:44.997 --> 15:47.967 what her father said. 15:47.970 --> 15:52.710 Moore included in her Selected Poems notes that 15:52.713 --> 15:57.553 disclose some of the sources that she was quoting from, 15:57.546 --> 16:00.586 borrowing from, and collaging. 16:00.590 --> 16:08.210 And this particular poem bares a note that attributes much of 16:08.207 --> 16:12.267 this quotation to a certain A.M. 16:12.270 --> 16:17.980 Homans, who is, in fact, a distant relative of 16:17.983 --> 16:22.303 my colleague Margaret Homans. 16:22.299 --> 16:25.949 This Miss Homans, who supplies most of what's in 16:25.952 --> 16:30.152 the quotation there, is not Marianne Moore's father, 16:30.149 --> 16:36.389 so she's sort of borrowed words for her father from another 16:36.391 --> 16:39.261 source. And yet at the same time 16:39.262 --> 16:44.022 there's real poignancy in this and an expressive poignancy. 16:44.019 --> 16:47.309 Moore is telling us something about herself. 16:47.309 --> 16:53.229 She's being silent about the very early death of her own 16:53.232 --> 16:59.122 father who was therefore, in fact, a silent presence in 16:59.116 --> 17:05.066 her life, who told no stories to her and said no sayings, 17:05.069 --> 17:10.569 and whom she couldn't, in fact, quote in this manner. 17:10.569 --> 17:16.849 "Silence," this short poem, is at once a modernist poem 17:16.854 --> 17:23.374 that Eliot would have understood and admired and close to 17:23.371 --> 17:30.821 nineteenth-century poems in its ethical values and concerns. 17:30.819 --> 17:35.359 It suggests too, I think, some of Moore's 17:35.361 --> 17:40.931 perhaps ambivalent, certainly complex relationship 17:40.925 --> 17:46.035 to her male peers: a topic that I talked about 17:46.035 --> 17:52.275 last time with her poem "A Grave" in front of us, 17:52.279 --> 17:57.109 which was connected to that correspondence with Pound. 17:57.109 --> 18:03.439 I also mentioned her correspondence with Hart Crane 18:03.436 --> 18:11.156 who submitted his poems to her in her role as editor at The 18:11.155 --> 18:14.305 Dial, where she was, 18:14.307 --> 18:18.467 in fact, in a very powerful position in literary culture. 18:18.470 --> 18:23.170 In certain ways, Moore had a kind of established 18:23.170 --> 18:28.070 authority in that culture that Crane never had. 18:28.069 --> 18:32.259 Here, she had an important job picking poems, 18:32.255 --> 18:36.055 editing writing, reviewing, and otherwise 18:36.059 --> 18:41.769 shaping the tastes of American readers through this important 18:41.766 --> 18:44.806 magazine, The Dial. 18:44.809 --> 18:50.619 And yet, at the same time, Moore always has a kind of 18:50.616 --> 18:57.536 marginal and combative relation to her major male peers that is 18:57.539 --> 19:04.239 suggested in "A Grave" and in her irritation at the man who's 19:04.240 --> 19:06.920 blocking her view. 19:06.920 --> 19:11.930 When you read Elizabeth Bishop's memoir of Moore – 19:11.929 --> 19:16.249 Elizabeth Bishop, Moore's great protégé – 19:16.250 --> 19:22.140 that really wonderful bit of both biography and autobiography 19:22.144 --> 19:27.944 that I asked you to read for this class called Efforts of 19:27.939 --> 19:33.009 Affection, in there you see Moore 19:33.007 --> 19:40.937 interacting with the male poets of her era in interesting and 19:40.935 --> 19:45.955 comical ways. Remember how some of them 19:45.959 --> 19:50.669 appear. Bishop notes the presence of 19:50.668 --> 19:58.358 Ezra Pound in the Moores's apartment when Moore notes that 19:58.361 --> 20:04.841 Pound had burned the banister with his cigar. 20:04.839 --> 20:08.409 He had to keep his cigar out of Mrs. 20:08.412 --> 20:12.702 Moore's apartment, and this sort of flaming 20:12.699 --> 20:16.679 phallic object burns the staircase. 20:16.680 --> 20:22.720 Bishop also tells about seeing a valentine that T.S. 20:22.719 --> 20:27.219 Eliot had written to Marianne Moore; 20:27.220 --> 20:31.780 Pound with a cigar and Eliot with his valentine. 20:31.779 --> 20:36.909 And then there's an account of a reading where Bishop heard 20:36.909 --> 20:42.129 Moore read with William Carlos Williams who – Williams did 20:42.127 --> 20:47.077 – made "loud" and "realistic" "sea monster" roars. 20:47.079 --> 20:53.549 All of these are kind of comic, and yet suggestive, 20:53.548 --> 21:01.308 symbolic representations of phallic power through display, 21:01.309 --> 21:07.689 imposition, condescension, et cetera, all of which Moore 21:07.690 --> 21:13.610 seemed to manage to keep at arm's length through her 21:13.605 --> 21:20.115 distinctive life choices, which entailed living with her 21:20.115 --> 21:26.295 mother in an apartment in the Village and then on Cumberland 21:26.302 --> 21:28.612 Street in Brooklyn. 21:28.609 --> 21:33.339 Moore's literary life, her imagination, 21:33.337 --> 21:40.057 was rooted in this domestic space that Bishop describes 21:40.055 --> 21:45.275 powerfully and minutely in her memoir; 21:45.279 --> 21:51.959 a domestic space that had all sorts of eccentric rituals and 21:51.957 --> 21:57.497 charms, a specifically female-centered world where 21:57.503 --> 22:04.413 Moore could admit men like Pound but where mother and daughter 22:04.408 --> 22:10.288 could lead their cultured literary lives very much on 22:10.293 --> 22:17.333 their own terms, without any men to answer to. 22:17.329 --> 22:22.379 Moore's poem, evoked in Bishop's essay, 22:22.381 --> 22:30.891 is a version you could say of the many shelters that you find, 22:30.890 --> 22:36.160 or shells or protective armor, that you encounter in Moore's 22:36.164 --> 22:38.054 poems. She admires, 22:38.045 --> 22:43.185 is always fascinated by, armored animals and the kinds 22:43.192 --> 22:47.662 of protection they seem to carry with them. 22:47.660 --> 22:53.000 "The Pangolin" is one example. 22:53.000 --> 22:59.660 Poems are also for Moore forms of shelter, I would say. 22:59.660 --> 23:03.770 They're spaces in which she could construct a world, 23:03.766 --> 23:07.546 or parts of a world, again, very much on her own 23:07.550 --> 23:10.610 terms, according to her own rules. 23:10.609 --> 23:16.399 Like her home, her writing was made safe, 23:16.398 --> 23:23.048 habitable, strong, and pleasurable by virtue of 23:23.054 --> 23:30.294 the limitations that she imposed upon herself. 23:30.289 --> 23:36.679 This is connected powerfully to Moore's ethical ideas and to her 23:36.675 --> 23:42.155 feminism. Bishop writes about Moore in 23:42.162 --> 23:50.442 "Efforts of Affection" often expressing ways in 23:50.439 --> 23:54.729 which she, Bishop, as a young writer 23:54.730 --> 23:59.970 chafed under the curious rules and disciplines of the Moore 23:59.974 --> 24:03.624 household. And yet, she seems to 24:03.620 --> 24:10.210 understand the power that was in those rules for Moore. 24:10.210 --> 24:15.940 And Bishop defends Moore's feminism specifically against 24:15.937 --> 24:22.077 the kinds of attacks made on Moore or dismissals of Moore by 24:22.081 --> 24:27.081 specifically sixties and seventies feminism. 24:27.080 --> 24:34.530 Bishop says: Do they know that [that 24:34.529 --> 24:40.549 is, feminist critics of Moore] Marianne Moore was a feminist 24:40.551 --> 24:43.651 in her day? Or that she paraded with the 24:43.653 --> 24:46.633 suffragettes…? Once, Marianne told me, 24:46.625 --> 24:51.375 she "climbed a lamppost" in a demonstration for votes for 24:51.384 --> 24:53.994 women. What she did up there, 24:53.990 --> 24:57.920 what speech she delivered, if any, I don't know, 24:57.922 --> 25:02.862 but climb she did in a long skirt and petticoats and a large 25:02.857 --> 25:06.037 hat… [She, Bishop, continues:] 25:06.039 --> 25:09.839 Now that everything can be said, and done, 25:09.837 --> 25:14.837 have we anyone who can compare with Marianne Moore, 25:14.839 --> 25:19.389 who was at her best when she made up her own rules and when 25:19.386 --> 25:23.616 they were strictest--the reverse of "freedom"? 25:23.619 --> 25:26.469 She puts that as a question, but it's not really a question, 25:26.473 --> 25:29.413 is it? She's really making a strong 25:29.406 --> 25:34.946 defense of Moore and of the ways in which Moore used rules and 25:34.954 --> 25:39.684 disciplines to exercise a certain kind of freedom and 25:39.683 --> 25:44.143 certainly to obtain a certain kind of power. 25:44.140 --> 25:50.910 Moore has her own version of that statement in that essay at 25:50.913 --> 25:57.463 the back of the anthology called "Humility, Concentration, 25:57.457 --> 26:02.617 and Gusto." "Gusto" is the sort of virtue 26:02.618 --> 26:07.718 of, let's say, energy that Moore approves in 26:07.717 --> 26:11.657 writing and art, above all, in certain ways, 26:11.664 --> 26:15.184 and she says at the bottom of the page: "Gusto thrives on 26:15.179 --> 26:18.949 freedom, and freedom in art, as in life." 26:18.950 --> 26:23.720 And art and life are always versions of each other for 26:23.724 --> 26:27.964 Moore, "is the result of a discipline imposed by 26:27.958 --> 26:30.708 ourselves." "Freedom in art, 26:30.710 --> 26:35.170 as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by 26:35.174 --> 26:40.064 ourselves." I've been talking today so far 26:40.056 --> 26:47.366 about forms of self-effacement or restraint that one finds, 26:47.369 --> 26:54.519 let's say, fanatically in Moore where she is impersonal in her 26:54.516 --> 27:00.486 self-presentation, where she quotes and creates 27:00.486 --> 27:08.646 her own voice by quoting others, and where she seems to withhold 27:08.647 --> 27:13.437 the first person in multiple ways. 27:13.440 --> 27:18.910 The most obvious and vivid and visible form of the rules that 27:18.906 --> 27:24.096 she sets herself is of course the way these poems look. 27:24.099 --> 27:28.059 "An Octopus" and "Silence" are very unusual poems for Moore 27:28.055 --> 27:30.505 because they are free-verse poems. 27:30.509 --> 27:36.889 By and large Moore's poems are always organized into these 27:36.889 --> 27:43.939 complex syllable counts and the crazy patterns that they produce 27:43.941 --> 27:47.211 such as in, well, let's say, 27:47.214 --> 27:53.194 just look at "The Steeplejack" or "The Pangolin" on pages 447 27:53.193 --> 27:57.233 and 449, or "The Paper Nautilus," which 27:57.233 --> 28:03.423 I'll talk about in a moment – poems that have intricate visual 28:03.415 --> 28:05.765 patterns on the page. 28:05.769 --> 28:13.969 They are examples and instances of Moore making up her own rules 28:13.966 --> 28:17.866 and finding freedom in them. 28:17.869 --> 28:21.369 They are also images of what she calls in "An Octopus" a 28:21.371 --> 28:23.791 "neatness of finish," you could say. 28:23.789 --> 28:30.219 They present the poems as highly crafted almost--not just 28:30.223 --> 28:34.363 visual but almost tactile objects. 28:34.359 --> 28:41.439 "Ecstasy affords the occasion and expediency determines the 28:41.439 --> 28:47.449 form," she said about her poems, again, referring to those two 28:47.451 --> 28:51.491 different moments of composition that she mentions in her letter 28:51.494 --> 28:54.194 to Pound that I talked about last time, 28:54.190 --> 28:59.590 where poems seem to come in a kind of vatic inspiration, 28:59.592 --> 29:05.292 producing a certain pattern which then she determines quite 29:05.290 --> 29:09.220 consciously to reproduce and extend. 29:09.220 --> 29:13.110 Let's look at "The Fish" for a moment. 29:13.109 --> 29:18.569 It's one of the most intricate and distinctive and strangest, 29:18.570 --> 29:22.170 on 436. And wait a minute, whoa! 29:22.170 --> 29:26.390 She's rhyming. This is actually a rhymed poem, 29:26.392 --> 29:29.932 too, something you might not immediately hear. 29:29.930 --> 29:34.250 But yes, but look at it: the fish "wade / through black 29:34.250 --> 29:36.650 jade" or "an / injured fan". 29:36.650 --> 29:41.730 This is really adding an extra twist of the rules, 29:41.734 --> 29:48.274 making the challenge of writing that much harder and in so doing 29:48.272 --> 29:52.232 you might say, to quote "An Octopus," 29:52.230 --> 29:56.410 expressing "the love of doing hard things." 29:56.410 --> 30:03.560 Remember Pound, his idea of the image. 30:03.559 --> 30:07.129 He wanted to give you direct presentation of the thing. 30:07.130 --> 30:11.310 What did he think about this? 30:11.309 --> 30:16.359 Here, you've got poems that are so conspicuously artificial, 30:16.358 --> 30:20.718 that stress a kind of discontinuity between form and 30:20.723 --> 30:23.643 content, and that really present 30:23.639 --> 30:28.319 themselves as arbitrary and constructed, rather than given 30:28.323 --> 30:30.943 and necessary. In this way, 30:30.940 --> 30:36.640 Moore is calling attention formally to the contingency of 30:36.636 --> 30:40.396 all her statements and utterances. 30:40.400 --> 30:46.180 She's also calling attention to the fact that these are made 30:46.180 --> 30:51.570 objects and that they are the record of their making. 30:51.569 --> 30:59.039 They're the record of a motive, what I call "the love of doing 30:59.042 --> 31:05.902 hard things," or which Moore just as often might refer to 31:05.902 --> 31:13.572 simply as love. Let me point us to a couple of 31:13.568 --> 31:16.948 other Moore poems. 31:16.950 --> 31:21.830 "To a Snail" for example, on page 446, 31:21.825 --> 31:27.615 another short, free verse poem written in the 31:27.624 --> 31:35.274 two- or three-year period where she wrote free verse poems, 31:35.267 --> 31:39.257 around 1924. If "compression is the 31:39.259 --> 31:44.119 first grace of style," you [snail] have it. 31:44.119 --> 31:47.129 Compression, "contractility": 31:47.125 --> 31:52.165 these are virtues, "as modesty is a virtue," and 31:52.170 --> 31:57.390 they're forms of modesty: What we value in writing in 31:57.386 --> 32:01.896 style is the principle that is hid, a kind of animating motive 32:01.895 --> 32:06.405 that informs what we have, what's there before us, 32:06.408 --> 32:12.378 but which is necessarily in some sense silent and expressed 32:12.381 --> 32:15.781 through restraint, as it were. 32:15.779 --> 32:23.859 A compressed style such as Moore's seems to compress and 32:23.860 --> 32:29.150 contain an important human motive. 32:29.150 --> 32:34.000 Another poem about the aesthetics of style that, 32:33.998 --> 32:40.498 again, moves between principles in art and principles in life is 32:40.497 --> 32:46.787 the poem in your RIS packet called "When I Buy Pictures," 32:46.790 --> 32:54.790 in which Moore says: And then she gives a number of 32:54.791 --> 32:56.941 different examples. 32:56.940 --> 33:01.180 Further down, she starts to generalize again. 33:01.180 --> 33:03.680 She says: The shelters, 33:03.679 --> 33:07.339 the objects, the artworks that Moore finds 33:07.335 --> 33:11.075 exemplary that she wants to care about, 33:11.079 --> 33:16.289 that she wants us to care about and that she wants her poems to 33:16.290 --> 33:20.240 exemplify, would be forms of acknowledgement, 33:20.240 --> 33:23.980 acknowledging the spiritual forces that have brought them 33:23.975 --> 33:27.305 into being: the principles that are hid in them, 33:27.309 --> 33:32.089 those forces about which they are ultimately and can only ever 33:32.088 --> 33:33.888 be ultimately silent. 33:33.890 --> 33:41.020 33:41.019 --> 33:46.149 Those spiritual forces, they have a kind of energy, 33:46.152 --> 33:50.422 they have light. They're lit by "piercing 33:50.420 --> 33:53.850 glances into the life of things." 33:53.849 --> 33:59.249 That "life of things," that phrase, that's Wordsworthian, 33:59.253 --> 34:01.573 a rich, simple phrase. 34:01.569 --> 34:06.809 She means by it the life of things. 34:06.809 --> 34:12.149 Those things that have life in that sense are not merely things 34:12.147 --> 34:16.707 but creations that are infused with creative force. 34:16.710 --> 34:21.190 Artworks for Moore, like God's creation, 34:21.192 --> 34:27.052 carry a kind of burden of acknowledgement to give us 34:27.054 --> 34:34.184 access to and honor the forces that bring them into being. 34:34.179 --> 34:38.989 The really great poem, I think, on this theme is "The 34:38.993 --> 34:43.413 Paper Nautilus." And let me end our 34:43.412 --> 34:51.212 contemplation of Moore with this poem on page 451. 34:51.210 --> 34:59.430 It suggests a way to understand the specifically female artist 34:59.425 --> 35:05.465 that Moore is. It's a kind of shell left 35:05.465 --> 35:12.765 behind that protects the eggs of the sea animal, 35:12.770 --> 35:16.190 the paper nautilus. 35:16.190 --> 35:24.290 It's a beautiful object and I wish I had the images of it to 35:24.289 --> 35:29.389 show you. She begins in this first stanza 35:29.387 --> 35:33.897 maybe a little confusingly by saying: 35:33.900 --> 35:37.970 In other words, why does the paper nautilus 35:37.966 --> 35:42.126 make its beautiful art that is its shell? 35:42.130 --> 35:48.900 Does it do so for celebrity, money, tea-time fame, 35:48.899 --> 35:52.629 the comfort of commuters? 35:52.630 --> 35:58.130 No, no, none of these things, none of these potential and 35:58.125 --> 36:01.065 base motives for making art. 36:01.070 --> 36:07.350 No, the paper nautilus's shell is something else: 36:07.349 --> 36:09.579 The shell is, first of all, 36:09.582 --> 36:13.192 made not for popular or genteel reasons. 36:13.190 --> 36:17.100 It is specifically a perishable because all art, 36:17.102 --> 36:20.102 everything we make, is perishable; 36:20.099 --> 36:23.089 it is a perishable "souvenir of hope." 36:23.090 --> 36:28.860 It's such a beautiful phrase, "souvenir of hope." 36:28.860 --> 36:36.460 It is a memory of our desire and wish and aspiration for a 36:36.460 --> 36:40.710 future. This is what the shell holds 36:40.713 --> 36:44.073 and contains. It's not immortal, 36:44.067 --> 36:47.567 it's material; it's delicate and perishable. 36:47.570 --> 36:52.320 It carries a memory of desire, of hope that strives towards 36:52.318 --> 36:57.228 the future, and of a belief in the worthiness of striving. 36:57.230 --> 37:02.430 It exemplifies the "love of doing hard things," carries this 37:02.425 --> 37:05.765 into the future. The shell is maternal, 37:05.773 --> 37:09.543 or the sign of the maternal, let's say rather. 37:09.539 --> 37:13.979 It is a kind of shelter for the future. 37:13.980 --> 37:19.110 It carries hope in the specific form of the creature's eggs. 37:19.110 --> 37:23.070 This, you could say, is a kind of revision of the 37:23.070 --> 37:26.700 earlier image of female power as volcanic. 37:26.699 --> 37:31.289 Again, there's something inside of great power, 37:31.286 --> 37:37.066 but it's another way of rendering or imaging this power. 37:37.070 --> 37:40.910 And interestingly, this creature, 37:40.912 --> 37:44.752 like the mountain, is an octopus, 37:44.754 --> 37:51.964 viewed as if it were a poem or as a kind of version of what a 37:51.958 --> 37:56.818 poem is. You could say that the shell 37:56.824 --> 38:01.374 Moore's writing about, like a Moore poem, 38:01.373 --> 38:06.153 gives birth to images of heroic action, 38:06.150 --> 38:10.070 and her poems are full of heroic characters: 38:10.067 --> 38:13.527 some human, some, many more, animal; 38:13.530 --> 38:17.140 all of whom in certain ways, like Hercules here, 38:17.139 --> 38:19.289 are "hindered to succeed." 38:19.289 --> 38:22.059 And that's a wonderful and interesting phrase, 38:22.061 --> 38:23.541 "hindered to succeed." 38:23.539 --> 38:28.869 I think it means "hindered to succeed" in the sense of held 38:28.870 --> 38:30.800 back or restrained. 38:30.800 --> 38:34.800 But when something is restrained in such a way, 38:34.796 --> 38:38.616 it is restrained in order that it succeed; 38:38.619 --> 38:44.099 "hindered to succeed," in that sense, restrained in order to 38:44.102 --> 38:47.542 succeed, to overcome its hindrance, 38:47.539 --> 38:52.129 and to overcome its self-imposed rules and 38:52.132 --> 38:58.972 guidelines or stanza forms in order to produce the future that 38:58.965 --> 39:02.555 it dreams of. Ultimately, those eggs, 39:02.559 --> 39:06.819 they free themselves and free the shell at the same time. 39:06.820 --> 39:12.180 The shell in its freedom is a model of the poem as a kind of 39:12.182 --> 39:16.322 autonomous object, a thing that stands on its own 39:16.320 --> 39:19.720 – impersonal, taken away and apart from the 39:19.723 --> 39:23.703 maker. It is strong and it's delicate. 39:23.699 --> 39:29.589 It acknowledges and points to the spiritual forces that made 39:29.585 --> 39:31.875 it or illuminated it. 39:31.880 --> 39:35.680 "The Paper Nautilus" is actively revising the famous 39:35.680 --> 39:40.300 poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes that I've given you a copy of, 39:40.300 --> 39:46.550 "The Chambered Nautilus," which celebrates the maker, 39:46.554 --> 39:51.494 you could say, and the energy of the maker 39:51.485 --> 39:57.975 that moves on to its ever more beautiful mansions. 39:57.980 --> 40:02.780 Moore celebrates, rather, the made object, 40:02.782 --> 40:08.992 because it refers us back to the process of making, 40:08.989 --> 40:13.619 which is not a process of will only but a process in which the 40:13.616 --> 40:18.716 will is hindered or restrained, in which aspiration meets 40:18.721 --> 40:23.261 resistance. Look at the final lines of the 40:23.255 --> 40:26.535 poem, they're very beautiful. 40:26.539 --> 40:30.729 The shell is described as having: 40:30.730 --> 40:35.980 …wasp-nest flaws of white on white, and close- 40:35.980 --> 40:43.910 laid Ionic chiton-folds And there she's seeing the 40:43.907 --> 40:47.857 white shell as if it were a Greek marble. 40:47.860 --> 40:53.440 And it puts her in mind of the Elgin marbles that decorated the 40:53.440 --> 40:57.860 Parthenon: The shell is ultimately 40:57.862 --> 41:04.082 compared to a horse which has lost its rider, 41:04.084 --> 41:11.584 whose arms no longer go around it and restrain it. 41:11.579 --> 41:17.329 Well, there's an analogy between the horse and an implied 41:17.334 --> 41:21.754 absent rider, and the shell and the creature 41:21.752 --> 41:28.242 that was once inside it, and the poem and the poet who 41:28.236 --> 41:31.896 wrote it. Hope, here at the end of the 41:31.902 --> 41:35.102 poem, is renamed love, a force imaged, 41:35.104 --> 41:38.224 again, through a kind of silence, 41:38.219 --> 41:42.299 through its absence, or rather through the traces of 41:42.300 --> 41:47.700 its continuing presence, which are the traces that we 41:47.696 --> 41:54.206 see in the strength and beauty of the object which is, 41:54.210 --> 41:59.010 I think, ultimately the difference between silence and 41:59.010 --> 42:03.540 restraint: that is, love is present in the poem. 42:03.540 --> 42:05.460 It's not merely silent. 42:05.460 --> 42:10.650 It's present through its restrained expression. 42:10.650 --> 42:14.580 And what remains in the poem, in the shell, 42:14.580 --> 42:20.290 and in the Parthenon horse is a kind of acknowledgement of the 42:20.288 --> 42:25.808 spiritual forces that brought these objects into being. 42:25.809 --> 42:37.569 Well, we will go on and talk about Moore's great peer, 42:37.566 --> 42:43.996 Wallace Stevens, next week.