Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moorewas an American Modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 November 1887
CityKirkwood, MO
CountryUnited States of America
Marianne Moore quotes about
revision rewards
Revision is its own reward.
naked safe vulnerability
All are / naked, none is safe.
writing amber use
[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing, is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.
mind ears should
In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.
procedures chromosomes plans
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.
eye legs faces
the small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group; the shadbones regularly set about the mouth, to droop or rise
mind enchanting
The mind is an enchanting thing.
giving letters
he who gives quickly gives twice / in nothing so much as in a letter.
mother character stories
Hindered characters / seldom have mothers / in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.
time use interruptions
When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ...
work hands weather
Concurring hands divide flax for damask that when bleached by Irish weather has the silvered chamois-leather water-tightness of a skin.
shoes white dancing
The deft white-stockinged dance in thick-soled shoes! Denmark's sanctuaried Jews!
stars loss sky
[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.
sea return looks
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea; the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.