Moore’s America 447human and thus a sinner. (We recall Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God” in this image of a spider spinning a thread. The
indelibly “etched” scene of the artist now becomes as fragile as a web.
Ingenious man is not really in control at all, but a sinner hung by God over
the pit of Hell.) The steeple jack wears the colors of Satan and “gilds” the
star that “stands for hope.” Hope is misplaced, it seems, when it is invested
in human institutions, whether they be stock exchanges, places of worship,
or small-town societies. Yet this is not a sermon in the tradition of Jonathan
Edwards, but a pastoral in the tradition of Andrew Marvell. The poet
delights in a world arrayed for sensual pleasure and relaxation, a world of
densely varied vegetation, with “cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort, /
striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies” (and so on for several
stanzas, some two-thirds of which had been cut to make this still copious
version) and charming human structures—“a schoolhouse, a post-office in a
/ store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on / the stocks.”
Moore’s lists are little societies—one notices the relative modesty of this list
of dwellings (where a schoolhouse gets no higher grammatically than a
fishhouse, where a grand schooner, like a beached whale, sits on stocks), in
contrast with the verbal and visual plenitude of the gardens. Still, man and
nature do achieve a kind of harmony in this place, at least in moments of
detached meditation, when history is pressed into the background. But this
poem was included in a collection of three entitled “Part of a Novel, Part of
a Poem, Part of a Play,” and one feels strongly that a story (narrative is the
end of pastoral) is about to begin.
Whether she is dealing with city or wilderness, sublime or pastoral
landscapes, then, Moore’s America becomes a place for the genuine when she
reveals the frames that create “people’s surroundings.” Because these
environments are made as well as inhabited, they do not offer places of
permanence or grounds of origin. What is true of her animal poems is true
of her landscapes—nature, as it relates to human beings, is embedded in
history.
LANDSCAPE ANDHISTORYThese investigations of contemporary America’s myths about itself led
Moore increasingly to inquire into American historical origins, especially as
embedded in our sense of place. American ideology reveals a resistance to the
idea that “nature’s nation” should be subject to history at all. How could a
culture grounded in innocent nature be anything but permanent? An
incarnate culture does not evolve;it is truth revealed. History, for Americans,