MODERNMooreNotes2

Quotation...clearly presents a serious problem for a concept of poetic form in which the self is implicated in speech, and which in effect defines form as a limit that confers identity by establishing difference If “The I of each is to / The I of each, / A kind of fretful speech,” then to incorporate another’s speech into ones’ own is necessarily also to incorporate “The I of each” into “The I of each,” and so to break down--or at least threaten seriously--the difference on which identity depends.

Such transgressions may occur from either of two directions. The poet may think of herself as violating the limits of her own speech when seizing a word or phrase written by someone else and therefore may define quotation as a predatory act; or she may think of the other’s speech as having crossed both its limits and her own, forcing its way into the poem by dint of... sheer ‘creative power’... (86)

The reader may not see...that the strength of form lies precisely in the “element of unreason under it.” No discernible logic within Moore’s patterns governs the initial decision that a given line shall have so many syllables and the next line so many syllables more or less than the first, just as no discernible logic within the pattern determines a particular rhyme scheme. Yet once the form of the original stanza has been repeated --once form as become pattern--pattern becomes a logic and derives its power not only from the fact that it is pattern, but also from its very unreasonableness, its arbitrariness...

That unreasoned and unreasoning adherence to a set of self-imposed limits (in “Critics and Connoisseurs” Moore calls it ‘unconscious / Fastidiousness’) which give to each poem...a distinctive form of its own, also enables--and to a certain extent requires--the poem to withstand the “creative power” of other texts... (87)

ENG LISH 660: 002	Modernist Women Poets: Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Lorine Niedecker
Marianne	Moore: instructor's notes: Susan Tichy
spr ing 20 05 GEO RGE MAS ON UNI VER SITY	Quotations from Moore's Complete Prose “By the brokenness of his composition,” he writes, “the poet makes himself master of a certain weapon which he could possess himself of in no other way.” 56 quoting William Carlos Williams, review of Kora in Hell, 1921 One does not quarrel with the statement that “the more senses utilized in conveying knowledge, the better the result” and one conceives...the possibility of supplementing what seems to be poverty in the average child and adult, of knowledge by association. 225 “Briefer Mention” of Motion Pictures in Education, 1923 If he rates audacity too high as an aesthetic asset, there can be no doubt that he has courage of the kind which is a necessity and not merely an admired accessory. 58 quoting William Carlos Williams, review of Kora in Hell, 1921 Although the behavior of an ear that lives on sound is as sudden as the rush of the canoe toward the rapid, the swerve to a pun or the quoting of a familiar phrase in a new connection--even by so justified a person as Emily Dickinson--gives one a start. Against near rhyme or no rhyme where rhyme is required, complaint seems general. But Emily Dickinson was a person of power and could have overcome, had she wished to, any less than satisfactory feature of her lines. The self-concealing pronoun...independence of the subjunctive, and many another select defect, are, for the select critic, attractions. 292 review of Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, 1933 The selective nomenclature--the chameleon’s eye if we may call it so--of the connoisseur, expresses a genius for differences; analogous dissimilarities... In what degree diverse subject-matters lend themselves to association, is a question... However expressive the content of an anthology, one notes that a yet more distinct unity is afforded in the unintentional portrait given, of the mind which brought the assembled integers together. 183 Review of three anthologies, 1927 Style is for Mr. Cummings “translation”; it is a self-demonstrating aptitude for technique. 301 Review of Cummings’ Ennui, 1933 In all artists, there is a tendency towards hermitry and a desire for justification from those who know what beauty is. 62 Review of Stewart Mitchell’s Poems, 1921 John Slatin on quotation:# John Slatin on Moore & Quotation: Quotation...clearly presents a serious problem for a concept of poetic form in which the self is implicated in speech, and which in effect defines form as a limit that confers identity by establishing difference If “The I of each is to / The I of each, / A kind of fretful speech,” then to incorporate another’s speech into ones’ own is necessarily also to incorporate “The I of each” into “The I of each,” and so to break down--or at least threaten seriously--the difference on which identity depends. Such transgressions may occur from either of two directions. The poet may think of herself as violating the limits of her own speech when seizing a word or phrase written by someone else and therefore may define quotation as a predatory act; or she may think of the other’s speech as having crossed both its limits and her own, forcing its way into the poem by dint of... sheer ‘creative power’... (86) Slatin relates this to Moore’s stanza forms: The reader may not see...that the strength of form lies precisely in the “element of unreason under it.” No discernible logic within Moore’s patterns governs the initial decision that a given line shall have so many syllables and the next line so many syllables more or less than the first, just as no discernible logic within the pattern determines a particular rhyme scheme. Yet once the form of the original stanza has been repeated --once form as become pattern--pattern becomes a logic and derives its power not only from the fact that it is pattern, but also from its very unreasonableness, its arbitrariness... That unreasoned and unreasoning adherence to a set of self-imposed limits (in “Critics and Connoisseurs” Moore calls it ‘unconscious / Fastidiousness’) which give to each poem...a distinctive form of its own, also enables--and to a certain extent requires--the poem to withstand the “creative power” of other texts... (87) From The Savage’s Romance: The Poetry of Marianne Moore. Penn State U Press, 1986.