Exploring the Text

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  1. What argument does Marianne Moore make about poetry in this poem?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - What argument does Marianne Moore make about poetry in this poem?
  2. Read “Poetry” grammatically. That is, read it in complete sentences without paying attention to line breaks. What changes? What stays the same? Why do you think Moore broke the lines as she did?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - Read “Poetry” grammatically. That is, read it in complete sentences without paying attention to line breaks. What changes? What stays the same? Why do you think Moore broke the lines as she did?
  3. In lines 30–31, Moore paraphrases William Butler Yeats, who described the poet William Blake as a “literalist of the imagination.” The other places she uses quotations marks, such as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” (l. 32) are from her imagination. What do you think is the effect of this combination? How might it suit Moore’s purpose?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - In lines 30–31, Moore paraphrases William Butler Yeats, who described the poet William Blake as a “literalist of the imagination.” The other places she uses quotations marks, such as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” (l. 32) are from her imagination. What do you think is the effect of this combination? How might it suit Moore’s purpose?
  4. “[T]he vastness of the particular” is how poet William Carlos Williams described Moore’s signature mode. “So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events,” he added. How does “Poetry” illustrate Williams’s observation?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - “[T]he vastness of the particular” is how poet William Carlos Williams described Moore’s signature mode. “So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events,” he added. How does “Poetry” illustrate Williams’s observation?
  5. Moore was well-known for being a baseball fan. How does her allusion to baseball in lines 20–21 help her develop her ideas about what poetry is and isn’t?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - Moore was well-known for being a baseball fan. How does her allusion to baseball in lines 20–21 help her develop her ideas about what poetry is and isn’t?
  6. This version of the poem was published in 1919. In 1967, Moore revised it, reducing the poem to just three lines:

    I, too, dislike it.

    Reading it, however with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

    How do the two versions “annotate, challenge, and criticize one another,” as poet Robert Pinsky suggests?

    Question

    Exploring the Text: - This version of the poem was published in 1919. In 1967, Moore revised it, reducing the poem to just three lines:I, too, dislike it.Reading it, however with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.How do the two versions “annotate, challenge, and criticize one another,” as poet Robert Pinsky suggests?