The 50s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  Much of Miss Moore’s poetry takes the form of slyly satirical criticism—criticism of art, of literature, of human behavior—expressed in economical, tightly packed phrases, and in this criticism she shows herself to be something of a stickler for what she considers propriety. Of alcohol, that traditional midwife of the poet, she states uncompromisingly, “The wine cellar? No. It accomplishes nothing and makes the soul heavy.” (Since these lines and the quotations immediately following have been taken out of context, they are reproduced here without regard for the typographical niceties of their author’s versification.) In discussing literature, she writes, “Originality is in any case a byproduct of sincerity,” and she taunts the French by describing them as a people “in whose products mystery of construction diverts one from what was originally one’s object—substance at the core.” She dislikes “authorities whose hopes are shaped by mercenaries” and “writers entrapped by teatime fame and commuters’ comforts.” She deplores the abnormal perfection of roses, assuring them that “your thorns are the best part of you.” Her attitude toward her art is sometimes rather thorny itself, as when she observes, “Reading [poetry]…with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.” As a believer in good taste, she favors reticence: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.” Objective little notations like these seem to indicate an extremely reflective and slightly acid mind that abhors excess and prefers detached observation to participation, and this impression is reinforced by the rather striking fact that Miss Moore’s verse is almost devoid of anything approaching passionate warmth toward her fellow-man; indeed, her fellow-man very seldom appears in it at all. Her love is expended instead on a still-life or a landscape world inhabited by plants and animals that are usually small and very self-sufficient. Yet she is apt to regard this world pessimistically; the environment in which her little animals play out their dramas is nearly always a threatening one. The odds are against them, even though, often covered with protective armor, they make their dwellings in snug holes and have admirable qualities of adaptability and strong powers of survival. They appear as symbols of virtues that Miss Moore repeatedly extolls—courage, patience, firmness, loyalty, integrity, good sense, modesty, persistence, and independence. Like many another poet, Miss Moore celebrates what philosophers have called the élan vital, but she celebrates it with restraint, and its most impressive victories in her poetry are achieved by the small living things she portrays as holding their own against the hostile surroundings of nature, as in “Nevertheless”:

  The weak overcomes its

  menace, the strong over-

  comes itself. What is there

  like fortitude! What sap

  went through that little thread

  to make the cherry red!

  Miss Moore’s associative process of thought, which leads her discursively through her world of menaced and courageous creatures and often winds up with a pronouncement on human behavior, is well illustrated by a poem called “Snakes, Mongooses, Snake-Charmers and the Like.” This starts off with a tribute to the mongoose’s claws, passes on to images evoking the austerity of India and then to snakes and tortoises and chameleons, and finally poses the question of why the snake was invented. Typically, the answer is oblique, and ends with an aphorism:

  We do not know; the only positive thing about it is its shape;

  but why protest?

  The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive

  disease.

  Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best.

  · · ·

  The connoisseurs who regard Miss Moore’s poems almost literally as self-portraits are convinced that all those tiny beleaguered organisms surviving in adversity by means of fortitude, intelligence, and patience represent Miss Moore herself, and, moreover, that her manner of expression is as revealing as her subject matter. These judgments would appear to be sound, since a reader of Miss Moore’s verse who had never met its author or heard anything about her would be justified in concluding that she was a rather remote and isolated individual, a meditative soliloquist, a fascinated observer of life, a digressive but deliberately elegant thinker, a stoic, a moralist, and something of a frontierswoman in the realm of sensation, capable of extracting enormous drama from the slightest experiences and impressions—and all this is pretty much confirmed by the poet’s habits and the environment she has chosen for herself. Although her various obligations in the roles of monument, lioness, neighborhood grande dame, and pillar of the church involve her in a great deal of what she terms “dashing around,” Miss Moore feels and responds to the creative person’s need for privacy. Between her forays into the outer world, she lives alone, cooking her own meals at such times as she remembers to eat at all, corresponding with her numerous friends, and inviting the mood of “humility, concentration, and gusto” that she says is conducive to the difficult task of writing verse. She has likened herself during such intervals to “a cat in a basket with the lid on,” “a badger under a hedge of poison ivy,” and “a rat in a cheese”—similes that not only relate characteristically to animal life but convey a sense of snugness that is plainly very congenial to her.

  Miss Moore’s apartment is the apotheosis of snugness; indeed, it is snug almost to the point of restricting free movement, owing to a vast collection of miscellaneous objects she has amassed over the years. “I suppose my life is made happier by hoarding these things,” Miss Moore says apologetically, and a visitor is likely to suspect that she attaches great sentimental value to everything around her. In addition to the furniture (comfortably old-fashioned and not in itself obtrusive), the hoard includes a tremendous array of books, in which the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer rub bindings with Latin classics and volumes on science, history, and travel—all of them painstakingly dusted and kept either in crowded bookcases or in upended apple boxes that line the narrow hallways. It includes a walrus tusk from the Greely Expedition to the Arctic in 1881, countless porcelain and ivory likenesses of tigers and elephants, and a mass of bric-a-brac in less readily identifiable shapes. And it includes paintings, drawings, and etchings, as well as pictures that Miss Moore has cut from magazines and framed—a display whose sheer square footage threatens to overflow the limited wall space that is not occupied by bookcases. Some of these mural ornaments are so faded that only the sharpest eye can make out what they are supposed to represent; others, more distinct, are works of purely personal interest, executed by friends (a stiff and naïve painting of a flower by E. E. Cummings, for example), or prints by artists of long ago (William Blake, for example). The subjects of the whole informal gallery are preponderantly animals—elephants, kangaroos, alligators, chickens, mice, hermit crabs, and very nearly all the rest. “Our ancestors!” Miss Moore explains, joyously embracing the entire display with a wave of the hand. Occasionally, though, the encroaching multitude of her possessions drives her to the verge of impatience. “I never want to own anything any more,” she told a visitor not long ago. “No more shells and feathers! People present you with things they think may suggest an idea for a poem, but there simply aren’t enough alcoves and embrasures to put them all in.” Miss Moore does not usually remain in this mood for long, however, and she has never been able to bring herself to discard any of her remarkable accretion. Even in her most exasperated moments, the mere mention of some old coin or bit of porcelain in her collection will prompt her to dig it out and show it off with undisguised affection.

  In contrast to the rest of the apartment, Miss Moore’s kitchen has an air of practicality about it that suggests another side of her nature. A few pots and pans suffice for her culinary needs. “Cook and sew enough of the time and you feel degraded,” she says. “I cook only the essentials—meat and potatoes. I’ve never baked a pie.” On the kitchen table stands a Mason jar containing carrot juice, to which Miss Moore repairs for sustenance between meals, replenishing her supply from
time to time with the help of a vegetable-juicer. “Carrot juice increases vigor,” she says. The austerity of her kitchen is relieved only by a singular tool rack, of her own design and construction, in which she keeps various convenient implements—a plane, an auger, a pair of tin-cutting shears, a pair of pliers, two axes, a jar opener, a pair of scissors, and a gimlet, to name a few—all mounted in their proper places with a feeling for order that would do credit to the curator of a museum. The variety of these utensils not only bespeaks Miss Moore’s prowess as a domestic craftsman but adds to the impression that her apartment is a thoroughly self-sufficient refuge—that its occupant, when hidden away in it, is as independent of the world at large as a barnacle in its shell.

  · · ·

  As a consequence of Miss Moore’s literary eminence, she does not remain hidden away as much as she perhaps would like to. Her apartment has become a place of pilgrimage for editors, publishers, critics, poets, artists, and other admiring folk, who gladly undertake the trip across the river in order to pay their respects. While Miss Moore does not encourage wholesale invasions of her privacy, she is nevertheless gratified by an occasional visit and deeply appreciative of the effort people make in journeying all the way to what is for most of them a previously unexplored region of Brooklyn. By way of demonstrating this appreciation, she keeps a large supply of subway tokens on hand, and invariably urges guests from Manhattan to dip into it and so spare themselves the trouble of having to stop and buy one in the station before heading back under the East River. Sometimes her offer of a token is accepted casually, but sometimes it is accepted only after quite a show of reluctance, and once in a while it is flatly refused. There are those who suspect that Miss Moore likes to study the varied reactions to her considerate little gesture, and she is reported to have once admitted as much to a friend. “I know they don’t need it, and they know that I know they don’t need it, but I like to see what happens,” she is supposed to have said. “The most interesting people take it without making a fuss.” Questioned about this recently, Miss Moore denied ever having said any such thing. “Why, I would be incapable of testing a person in that way!” she exclaimed. But then she added, “Still, I do prize people a little more highly if they don’t make a big thing of it.”

  When guests arrive at the apartment, Miss Moore serves them tea, which she brews unostentatiously but with great care, seeing to it that her Chinese teapot is properly warmed beforehand and putting it in an upholstered basket when the tea is ready for pouring. During this ceremony, she moves about swiftly among the treasures in her living room in an easy, athletic fashion not generally associated with women of her age, and her manner, which in privacy resembles that of a preoccupied librarian, is transformed into that of a piquant and highly animated actress. The transformation is a very striking one. Her cheeks redden, she smiles slyly, and she becomes Marianne Moore the public personality, with all the challenges to wit and originality that this implies. She seems to grow appreciably taller. Her face, topped by a braid of gray hair wrapped around her head and held in place by a large celluloid hairpin, assumes an expression of girlish enthusiasm sharpened by occasional gleams of mockery, and she talks softly but very volubly, with a slightly flat drawl that may reflect her Midwestern origins.

  Miss Moore’s conversation is remarkable for its diversity, and for a certain recklessness that is likely to lead her, by a sequence of crowding and tumbling associations, into fields far removed from her starting point. For instance, while she has a high opinion of tea, she is aware that some of her guests may prefer something stronger, and therefore keeps on hand a bottle of Harvey’s Shooting Sherry. There is a hunting scene on the label, and on occasion this has served as a springboard for one of her dizzying monologues. At an afternoon gathering in her apartment a couple of months ago, the label led her to a consideration of other labels (though she might just as easily have veered in the direction of rabbits or quail), and this, in turn, led her to comment on grocery-store stocks, specifically on the stocks of the S. S. Pierce store, in Boston. “Very discriminating grocers,” she went on. “Even if they do carry cigars and wine and cosmetics along with their cheese, jam, cakes, soups, and all kinds of crackers. I can’t abide dilutions or mixtures, but I like candy. If I drank whiskey, I would drink it straight. I have a lethal grudge against people who try to make me drink coffee. My friend Mrs. Church grinds her own coffee from French and American beans. Her husband’s grandfather was a chemical inventor who invented a brand of bicarbonate of soda. His wife is a Bavarian. Mrs. Church, I mean. She had a house at Ville-d’Avray with a big cedar of Lebanon and a dog named Tiquot. They had a gardener who also drove the car. They wouldn’t have begonias on the place. They did have a few geraniums, though. Mr. Church was a close friend of Wallace Stevens, who wrote The Necessary Angel. He reprinted an anecdote about Goethe wearing black woollen stockings on a packet boat. I like Goethe. My favorite language is German. I like the periodic structure of the sentences. ‘And Shakespeare inspires me, too. He has so many good quotations. And Dante. He has a few, too.’ That’s from Ruth Draper. At Monroe Wheeler’s once, we played a game called ‘Who would you rather be except Shakespeare?’ I wouldn’t mind being La Fontaine, or Voltaire. Or Montaigne? No. I wouldn’t be Montaigne—too sombre. I have always loved the vernacular. It spites me that I can’t write fiction. And that book of essays I wrote. I let myself loose to do my utmost, and now they make me uneasy. The critics didn’t care a great deal for them, but their reviews weren’t really vipish. Those readings of my verse I made for the phonograph—well, they’re here forever, like the wheat in the pyramids. I’m fond of Bach and Pachelbel and Stravinsky. I’m also fond of drums and trumpets—snare drums. If I find that a man plays the trumpet I am immediately interested.…”

  The torrent of impressions and observations continues unstintingly. Miss Moore’s listeners, in forming an opinion of it, tend to fall into two groups—those who delightedly occupy themselves in smelting out a memorable simile or adjective, and those who complain that it requires an enormous amount of strenuous concentration to make any sense at all of what she is saying. On the afternoon when S. S. Pierce received its pat on the back, one of the guests finally reached the point of exhaustion, and exclaimed, “Marianne, don’t jump around so in your conversation!”

  Miss Moore paused, turned pityingly toward the heretic, and replied with spirit, “It isn’t jumping around. It’s all connected.” Then she was off again.

  On another recent occasion, a bewildered guest interrupted Miss Moore to ask, “Do you realize where you started this digression?”

  Miss Moore drew herself up and, smiling a bit austerely, said, “Wasn’t it Aristotle who observed that ‘the ability to see a connection between apparently incongruous things is the sign of a poet’?” Then she looked worried. “Or was it the ‘mark’ of a poet?” she said. “I hate people who can’t quote things correctly, and then I go and make all kinds of mistakes myself. Was it the ‘mark’ of a poet or the ‘sign’ of a poet?” Another listener remarked that since the line was a translation anyhow, either word ought to be acceptable. But this was not enough for Miss Moore. By the following morning, she had tracked down the passage to its source and begun busily telephoning her guests to make elaborate apologies and give them the accurate version. “The sentence actually reads, ‘It is the mark of a poet to see a connection between apparently incongruous things,’ ” she told one of them breathlessly. “I feel as degraded as a worm at the bottom of an umbrella stand. But I’m so relieved to have got it right at last.”

  Some of Miss Moore’s friends interpret this reverence for scholarly exactitude, so at odds with her headlong habits of conversation, as one of a whole set of attitudes that are related to her conception of morals and propriety. She is as scrupulous in her regard for good form as the heroine of a Jane Austen novel, and there is about her a suggestion of both the Puritan woman and the Prussian knight. She dislikes seeing women apply makeup in public, and she h
erself, whether in public or alone, has an odd distaste for looking in a mirror, possibly—although she isn’t really sure why—because she has a deep-seated feeling that the act is too frivolous. This is not to imply that she is in any way frumpy; on the contrary, while she disapproves of luxurious living in the broad sense, she has a fondness for certain luxuries, especially that of dressing well, and she is under no illusion that a woman can be well dressed on a cut-rate basis. “A friend of mine once told me that I could find the equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue clothes on Fourteenth Street,” she said not long ago. “I don’t believe it. Besides, I don’t like to get bargains, because I don’t feel comfortable exploiting a store.” The flow of Miss Moore’s thought, whether written or spoken, is interspersed with allusions indicating a deep respect for romantic ideals of behavior—ideals involving monasticism, gallantry, and soldierliness. Despite an inveterate hatred of war, she thinks highly of the military life. “It means a great deal to me to know that there are in the world a few real enemies of enslavement and that some of them are generals—General Eisenhower, General MacArthur, and General de Tassigny,” she told an interviewer in 1951. And, for all the indirectness of her own mental habits, she greatly reveres directness and workaday logic in others. “I like the writing of precise scientific thinkers,” she says. “Lots of these scientists don’t stand forth as littérateurs, but I find their devotion to fact very stimulating. They are much more competent than I am, particularly where precision is concerned.” She prizes the works of chroniclers like Gibbon, and among her favorite authors are Julius Caesar and Xenophon. “Xenophon has wonderful qualities of restraint and latent satire,” she says. “He loved horses, and he believed that a good cavalry officer should be religious.”