Modern American Poetry

Motives and Motifs in the Poetry of Marianne Moore 45

the lightning flashing at its base,

rain falling in the valleys, and snow falling on the peak—.^2

We might have managed more easily by simply demarcating several
themes, like naming the different ingredients that go to make up a dish. Or
as with the planks that are brought together, to make a campaign platform,
regardless of their fit with one another. But the relation among the themes
of a genuine poetry is not of this sort. It is substantial—which is to say that all
the branches spread from a single trunk.
I am trying to suggest that, without this initial substantiality,
“objectivism” would lead not to the “feigned inconsequence of manner” that
Miss Moore has mastered, but to inconsequence pure and simple. But
because of this substantiality, the surfaces are derived from depth; indeed, the
strict lawfulness in their choice of surfaces is depth. And the objects treated
have the property not simply of things, but of volitions. They derive their
poignancy as motifs from their relation to the sources of motive. And the
relation between observer and observed is not that of news and reporter, but
of “conversities” (her word).
In the earlier volume there is a poem, “Black Earth,” wherein
surprisingly the poet establishes so close an identification with her theme as
not merely to “observe” it with sympathy and appreciation, but to speak for
it. This is one of her rare “I” poems—and in it the elephant sometimes speaks
with the challenge and confidence of an Invictus. Beginning on the theme of
emergence (coupled with delight in the thought of submergence at will),
there is first a celebration of the sturdy skin; then talk of power (“my back is
full of the history of power”); and then: “My soul shall never be cut into / by
a wooden spear.” Next comes mention of the trunk, and of poise. And
interwoven with the vigor of assertion, the focal theme is there likewise:

that tree-trunk without

roots, accustomed to shout

its own thoughts to itself ...

and:
... The I of each is to
the I of each
a kind of fretful speech
which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is
black earth preceded by a tendril?