18. Marianne Moore (cont.)

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Let's see I last time I I wanted to talk to you about more as a woman poet as an American poet and as a nature poet i didn't get very far with the ladder i started talking about that long really tough poem in octopus about Mount Rainier I'd like to go back there and to work through a little bit of that poem with you i suggested that this octopus that that more is writing about this mountain is that want something other something out there a an emblem of the power of the natural world and on the other hand something that more identifies with certain qualities of of the mountain.
Its energy its force the image of the octopus itself there the glacier on top of Mount Rainier has I think some eight arms and that's what she is playing with and I suggested that there's something octopus-like about Miriam or two with those long lines that that snake out and seem to grasp onto all sorts of stuff and producing this poetry of collage and in multiple voices more let me see if I worked through the the end of the poem with you for a month.
Well there's there's a long last the stands of paragraph whatever you would like to call it that begins on 444 at the bottom line 161.
More is talking about here maybe confusingly or unhelpfully Greek aesthetics while she's also talking about the creatures and people that inhabit this place that she's writing about Mount Rainier she she says on the middle of 445 about the the Greeks it so it's hard it's hard to quote from this poem is hard to enter at any point because each thing is kind of connected to the other and to make sense of anything you have to kind of work back she says.
Well how do you how do you approach nature in a sense that's the great question of the poem here the brochure is telling us.
Well we we shouldn't approach it with guns Nets etc we won't be welcome there more is going to develop this idea a little bit further she says in a sense why bother putting all that down more prodigiously includes these quotations from well you know hiking handbook and then a lyrical language like the spa salon flower concise without a shiver shifting between these registers of diction and then seeing the mountain as in that sense as some kind of special flower intact when it is cut and then she calls the mountain damned for its sacrosanct remoteness that is she's she's saying people people damn this mountain because it's too high and far and remote to climb sacrosanct remoteness that's a suggestive phrase it would seem to imply that the mountain where was being damned for possibly what we would recognize as ethical qualities in a person that is some kind of elite pneus and some kind of reserved in fact properties that you might find in an author like Henry James damned by the public for decorum here Moore makes the kind of strange and wild association of the mountain and henry james as if the mountain where somehow a kind of image of that great sort of early modernist prose writer damned by the public for decorum that is damned for his elite posture the demands he placed upon the reader and his high level of decorum in writing and then she corrects herself she says not decorum that's wrong but restraint that's what James exemplifies and that's what the mountain it seems exact to she continues and now she's talking about Henry James it is the love of well and moving out of henry james into it into a general a general principle it is the love of doing hard things whether it's climbing the mountain or reading late james that rebuffed and wore them out the public the public out of sympathy with neatness neatness she arrives here substituting one term for another first remoteness than decorum not decorum but restraint not restraint precisely necessarily or only but neatness a kind of aesthetic quality neatness of finish neatness of finish.
She says she exclaims those two exclamation points following as if well how did she say them is it is it in a spirit of exasperation with this public that's worn out by the demands placed on them by a certain kind of writing or by a certain kind of mountain it means she here mocking the idea of neatness of finish or or raising it as a kind of banner and battle cry now she moves back again to the mountain and relentless accuracy and here she will name it the octopus again relentless accuracy is the nature of this octopus with its capacity for fact she's talking about the mountain but the mountain itself seems now to be the embodiment of a certain kind of mind certain kind of imagination that grasps at and absorbs and comes to assimilate fact and then she will turn herself over in these closing lines to a series of quotations that describe the mountain and do so.
With a kind of lyric exaltation that-that-that-that climbs to the romantic sublime and does so out in this strange collage form.
It is an extraordinary kind of celebration and declaration celebration of the frankly savage forces that the mountain both embodies and injures at its altitude and as she does she suggest that there are similar forces of primal violence and intensity that are contained in and indeed expressed in the writing of henry james in the aesthetic project of restraint that she herself engages in and that she caused us to and calls the love of doing hard things whether that's climbing a mountain or reading poems this closing passage is so powerful and interesting because more moves from a kind of writing which is often ascribed to her or or identified with her that is description precise observation of the natural world a kind of writing that is this frequently seen as limited in its ambition and it's emotional power but amassed here in this sequence in fact takes on a kind of well remarkable force and in lyric intensity it makes more seemed not at all like the restrained or prudish virginal poet that many of her peers and subsequent readers have found her to be.
The fastest pneus decorum restraint these aesthetic and ethical values in short are here attached to powers and intensity that we don't ordinarily associate with them the volcano its whiteness that's important the white volcano with know whether side because the the weather side of the volcano has been broken off in an ancient blast the volcano signifies a kind of virginal force it is specifically female version of elemental power and of the sublime of Emersonian self-reliance that comes to more via Emily Dickinson who has her volcanoes to self reliance by self-reliance I mean Moore's hardy American insistence on self-sufficiency on independence and on originality and she is again the most radically original of all the poets we read the least like anybody else in this interestingly despite her reliance on quotation as her distinctive the medium there there's a powerful tradition of American romanticism that's present in more with feminist ramifications in its interestingly in more join to a modernist and Ellie otic aesthetic of in personality which we've seen the find and Elliot's essay on tradition and the individual talent and elsewhere Elliot's modernist aesthetics were attractive to more i think in part because Elliot's idea of in personality was compatible with female modesty with Christian virtue let me turn to another palma poem in your is packet as a helpfully concise as an octopus is long and that's the poem silence and you'll hear a kind of echo of the lines i just read.
Another I think powerful poem we saw more correct herself in an octopus saying not decorum but restraint here she says not in silence but restraint the deepest feelings she says shows itself in restraints shows itself in restraints somehow by through a very the very act of restraint is alive to an expressive act of self-disclosure paradoxically perhaps the keys to our deep identity are disclosed in some of the ways in which they are withheld this is a theme from one of the poems behind this poem which I've quoted for you on your handout from Longfellow from his palm of grief called resignation by silence sanctifying not concealing the grief that must have way more is writing though remote inform from Longfellow or Emerson for that matter or homes another part will look at later today is nonetheless deeply involved in nineteenth-century American poems hear the poem silence itself seems to be an example of what it's talking about that is it reveals something about more silently through what is not said or rather through the ways that what is said gesture towards what is not it's a poem that presumes to your presents itself as speaking for the poet in in the first person my father used to say well curiously more is really not in at least an explicit way speaking about her father or what her father said more included in her selected poems notes that disclosed some of the sources that she was quoting from borrowing from collaging with and this particular poem.
There's a note that attributes much of this quotation to a certain am Homans who is in fact a a distant relative of my colleague Margaret Homans this miss Holmes who served supplies most of its in the quotation there is not Miriam or his father so she's sort of borrowed words for her father from another source and yet at the same time there's real points in this and in expressive points more is is is telling us something about her self she's being silent about the very early death of her own father who was therefore in fact a silent presence in her life who told no stories to her and said no sayings who she couldn't in fact quote in this manner silence this short poem is at once a modernist poem that Elliot would have understood and admired and close to 19th century poems in its ethical values and concerns it suggests to I think so I'm of Moore's perhaps ambivalent certainly complex relationship to her male peers a topic that I talked about last time with her poem a grave in front of us which was connected to that correspondence with pound i also mentioned about her correspondence with with Hart Crane who submitted his poems to her in her role as editor at the dial where she was in fact in a very powerful position in in literary culture and you know in certain ways you know more had a kind of established Authority in that culture that crane never had here she had an important job picking poems editing writing reviewing and otherwise shaping the tastes of American readers through this important magazine the dial-in yet at the same time more has always had a kind of marginal and combative relation to her major male peers that is suggested in a grave and in her irritation at the man who's blocking her view when you read Elizabeth bishops memoir of more elizabeth bishop moore is great protégé that really wonderful bit of both biography and autobiography that I asked you to read this for this class called efforts of affection in there you you you see more interacting with the male poets of her era in interesting and comical ways.
Remember how some of them appear Bishop notes the presence of ezra pound in the Moors apartment when more notes that pound had burned the banister with this cigar you have to keep a cigar out of mrs. Morris apartment and and you know the sort of flaming phallic object you know burns the the staircase that there's the bishop also tells about thing a Valentine that TS Eliot had written to marianne moore you know pound with the cigar and and Elliot with his valentine and and then there's an account of a reading where Bishop heard more read with William Carlos Williams who Williams did made loud and realistic sea monster Wars you know all of these are kind of comic in yet suggestive symbolic representations of phallic power through display in position condescension etc all of which more seem to manage to keep at arm's length through her distinctive life choices which entailed living with her mother in an apartment in the village and then in on cumberland street in in Brooklyn Moore's literary life her imagination with was rooted in this domestic space that Bishop describes powerfully in and minutely in in her memoir a domestic space that had all sorts of eccentric rituals and charms specifically female centered world where more could admit men like pounds but we're mother and daughter could lead their culture literary lives very much on their own terms without any men to answer to Moores home of oakton in Bishop's sa is a version you could say of the many shelters that you find or shells or protective armor that you encounter in Moore's poems she you know she admires is always fascinated by armored animals and they're there they're the kinds of protection they seem to carry with them the Pangolin is is is one example poems are also for more forms of shelter i would say their spaces in which she could construct a world or parts of the world again very much on her own terms according to her own rules like her home her writing was made safe habitable strong pleasurable by virtue of the limitations that she imposed upon herself.
This is connected powerfully to Moore's ethical ideas and to her feminism Bishop writes about more in in that efforts of affection.
Well often with with the expressing ways in which she bishop as a young writer chafed under the curious rules and disciplines of the more household and yet she seems to understand the power that was in those rules for more and and Bishop defends Moore's feminism specifically against the kinds of attacks made on more dismissals of moher by specifically serve sixties and seventies feminism Bishop says you know do they know that that is a feminist critics of more that she was a feminist in her day or that she paraded with the suffragettes once Mary Ann told me she climbed a lamppost in the demonstration for votes for women which she did up there what speech he delivered a penny I don't know but climb she did in long skirts and petticoats in a large hat she a bishop continues now that everything can be said and done.
Have we any one who can compare with marianne moore who was at her best when she made up her own rules and when they were strictest the reverse of freedom she puts that as a question but it's not really a question is it she's really making a strong defense of more and of the ways in which more used rules and disciplines to exercise a certain kind of freedom and certainly to obtain certain kind of power more has her own version of that statement in that essay at the back of the anthology called humility concentration and Gus todo esto is the sort of virtue of let's say energy that more approves and writing and art above all in certain ways and she says at the bottom of the page.
Dusto thrives on freedom and freedom in art as in life and art and life are always versions of each other for more is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves freedom in art as in life is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves.
I've been talking today so far about well forms of self-effacement or restraint that one finds of once a thematic alee in more where she is impersonal in herself presentation where she quotes creates her own voice by quoting others where she seems to withhold the first person in multiple ways the most obvious and and and vivid and visible form of the rules that she sets herself is of course the way these poems look in octopus and silence are very unusual poems for more because they are free verse poems by and large Morris poems are always organized into these complex syllable counts and and the crazy patterns that they produce such as in well it's a just to look at the the steeplejack or the Pangolin on 447 449 or the paper Nautilus which I'll talk about in a moment.
Palms that have intricate visual patterns on the page they are examples and instances of more making up her own rules in finding freedom in them they are also images of what she calls in an octopus neatness of finish you could say the they present the palms as highly crafted almost not just visual but almost tactile objects ecstasy affords the occasion expediency determines the form she said about her poems again referring to those two different moments of composition that she were mentioned in her letter to pound that I talked about last time we're home seemed to come in a kind of vadik inspiration producing a certain pattern which then she determines quite consciously to reproduce and extend the well let's let's look at the the fish for a moment it's one of the most intricate and distinctive and strangest on 436.
And wait a minute whoa she's rhyming this is actually a rhymed poem to something you might not immediately here but yeah but look at it the fish wade through black jade or an injured fan this is this is really adding an extra twist of the rules making the challenge of writing that much harder and in so doing you might say to quote an octopus legs expressing the love of doing hard things more you remember remember pound his idea of the image he wanted to give you direct presentation of the thing what you what do you think about this here you've got poems that are so conspicuously artificial that that stress the kind of discontinuity between form and content that that really present themselves as arbitrary and constructed rather than given and in necessary in this way more is a calling attention formerly to the contingency of all her statements and utterances she's also calling attention to well the fact that these are made objects and that they are the record of their making their the record of motive what I called the love of doing hard things or which more of just as often might refer to simply as love let me point us to a couple other more palms to a snail for example on 446 a another short free verse poem in the written in the two or three-year period where she wrote freeverse palms around 1924 if compression is the first grace of style you snail have it and compression contractility these are virtues as modesty is a virtue in their forms of modesty.
What we value in writing in style is the principle that has hit a kind of animating motive that informs what we have what was there before us but which is necessarily in some sense silent expressed through restraint as it were a compressed style such as Moore's seems to compress and contain an important human motive another poem about the aesthetics of style that again moves between principles and art and principles in life is the palm in your Ras packet called when I by pictures in which more says.
And then she gives a number of different examples further down she starts to generalize again she says the shelter's the objects the artworks that more fines exemplary that she wants to care about that she wants us to care about and that she wants her poems to exemplify would be forms of acknowledgement acknowledging the spiritual forces that have brought them into being the principles that are hit in them those forces about which they are ultimately and can only ever be ultimately silent the those spiritual forces they they have a kind of energy they have light they're lit by piercing glances into the life of things that that life of things that phrase that's Wordsworth in a rich simple phrase she means by it the life of things those things that have life and that sense are not merely things but creations that are infused with with creative force artworks for more like God's creation carry a kind of burden of acknowledgment to give us access to an honor the forces that bring them into being the the really great poem i think on this theme is the paper novelist and let me and our contemplation of more with this pump on 451 it suggests a way to understand the specifically female artist that more is it is a it's a kind of shell left behind that protects the eggs of the sea animal the the paper Nautilus it's it's a beautiful object and and i wish i had the images of it to show you she begins in this first stanza maybe a little confusingly by saying in other words why does the paper Nautilus make its beautiful art that is its shell does it do so for celebrity money.
Teatime Fame the comfort of commuters no no none of these things none of these potential and base motives for making art know the paper nautilus shell is something else.
The shell is first of all made not for popular or genteel reasons it is specifically a perishable because all our everything we make is perishable is a perishable souvenir of hope it's that such a beautiful phrase souvenir of hope it is a memory of our desire and wish and aspiration for future this is what the shell holds and contains it's not immortal its material its delicate imperishable it carries a memory of desire of hope that strives towards the future and of a belief in the worthiness of driving it exemplifies the level of doing hard things carries this into the future.
The shell is maternal or the sign of the maternal it's a rather it is a kind of shelter for the future it carries hope in the specific form of the creatures eggs.
This is that this is you could say is it's a kind of revision of the earlier image of female powers of volcanic again there's something inside of great power but it's another way of rendering or imaging this power and and you know interestingly this creature like the the mountain is in octopus viewed as as as if it were a poem or as a kind of version of what a poem is you could say that the shell more is writing about like a more palm gives birth to images of heroic action and her poems are full of heroic characters some human some many more animal all of whom in in certain ways like Hercules here are hindered to succeed and that's a wonderful.
And an interesting phrase hindered to succeed i think it means hindered hindered to succeed in the sense of held back or restrained but when something is restrained in such a way it is restrained in order that it succeed hindered to succeed in that sense restrained in order to succeed to overcome its hindrance to overcome its self-imposed rules and guidelines or stand the forms in order to produce the the future that dreams up ultimately those eggs they free themselves and free the shell at the same time the shell in its freedom is is a model of of the poem as a kind of autonomous object of things stands on its own impersonal taken away and apart from the maker it is strong and its delicate it acknowledges and points to the spiritual forces that made it or illuminated it the paper Nautilus is actively revising the famous poem by oliver wendell holmes I've given you a copy of the chambered nautilus where which celebrates the maker you could say the any the energy of the maker that the moves on to its ever more beautiful mansions more celebrates rather the maid object because it refers us back to the process of making which is not a process of will only but a process in which the will is hindered or restrained which aspiration meets resistance look at the the final lines of the poem they're very beautiful.
The shell is described as being a a having wasp nests flaws of white on white and clothes laid ionic khaitan folds and there you know she's seeing the white shell as if it were a Greek marble and it puts her in mind of the Elgin marbles that decorated the Parthenon.
The shell is ultimately compared to the a horse which has lost its writer whose arms no longer go around it and and and restrain it the the well that there is an analogy between the horse and an implied absent writer and the shell and the creature that was once inside it and the poem and the poet who wrote it hope here at the end of the poem is renamed love a force image again through a kind of silence through its absence or rather through the traces that of its continuing presence which are the traces that we see in the strength and beauty of the object which is I think ultimately the difference between silence and restraint that is love is present in the poem it's not nearly silent its present through its restrained expression and what remains in the poem in the shell in the Parthenon horses is a kind of acknowledgment of the spiritual forces that brought these objects into being well we will go on and talk about Moore's great pier while Stevens next week.


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