Modern American Poetry

35

In this essay we would characterize the substance of Miss Moore’s work as a
specific poetic strategy. And we would watch it for insights which the
contemplation of it may give us into the ways of poetic and linguistic action
generally. For this purpose we shall use both her recently published book,
What Are Years, and her Selected Poems, published in 1935 with an
introduction by T.S. Eliot (and including some work reprinted from an
earlier volume, Observations).
On page 8 of the new book, Miss Moore writes:

The power of the visible

is the invisible;

and in keeping with the pattern, when recalling her former title, Observations,
we might even have been justified in reading it as a deceptively technical
synonym for “visions.” One observes the visibles—but of the corresponding
invisibles, one must be visionary. And while dealing much in things that can
be empirically here, the poet reminds us that they may

dramatize a

meaning always missed

by the externalist.

KENNETH BURKE

Motives and Motifs in

the Poetry of Marianne Moore

From A Grammar of Motives. © 1969 by the University of California Press.