386 Making It New: 1900–1945The peculiar quality of lines like these, poised between the controlled and the
spontaneous, largely results from Moore’s use of the medieval device of “rime-
breaking.” The formal outlines are severe: the stanzas based on syllable count, the
lines so arranged on the page as to repeat specific and often quite complicated
patterns. But these strict proportions are rendered much less strict by making the
stanza, instead of the line, the basic unit. Rhymes are sparse, enjambment the rule,
and the sense of run-on lines is increased by ending lines with unimportant
words and hyphenations. There is a frequent use of internal rhyme, too, to break up
the apparently formal pattern; and the pattern itself, which depends on such extreme
differences in line-length (there are, for example, nine syllables in line five of this
and every other stanza, only three syllables in line six), seems to participate in
the liveliness of the material quite as much as to organize it or set it off. The mixed
feelings of order and spontaneity generated by this complex verse structure are then
underlined by Moore’s special way with images and words. The descriptive detail is
extraordinarily, almost gratuitously, specific (“eight stranded whales”), asking us to
look closely at the object. Moore, like Williams, tried to capture the exact contours
of things in a painterly, microscopic manner, but not because, like Williams, she
wished to be appropriated by them or live their life. On the contrary, her firm belief
was that by observing an object lovingly she could discover significance in it which
extended beyond it. Precision liberated the imagination, she felt; the discipline of
close observation was, for her, a means of imaginative release.
There is a peculiar correspondence between Moore’s voice and her vision, for the
patterns of her verse embody and reinforce our sense of a world where spontaneity
and order are not at odds and where the marriage between them results in spiritual
poise. All Moore’s poems start from a belief in discipline, the acceptance of bounda-
ries. This acceptance was necessary, she felt, for two reasons. In the first place, the
mind could discover a safeguard against danger by accepting limitations. A good
deal of Moore’s poetry is about armor, protection, places to hide; and it is so probably
because Moore saw life in terms of risk, the threats our environment confronts us
with, the menace likely to overcome us if ever we should lose control. The second
reason is more significant, however: Moore also clearly believed that, in accepting
limitations, the mind discovers fulfillment, Freedom and happiness, she felt, are to
be found only in the service of forms, in an acknowledgment of the needs and
restrictions of our natures, the scope of our particular world. For Moore, as she
puts it in “To a Snail” (1935), “Contractility is a virtue / as modesty is a virtue” and
just as “compression is the first grace of style”: as poets, and as people, we need
discipline – formal, moral, intellectual – in order to realize our best possibilities.
Something of this is suggested in “The Steeple-Jack” by the character who gives the
poem its title. From “the pitch / of the church,” the poet tells us,a man in scarlet lets
down a rope, as a spider spins thread;
he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a
sign says C. V. Poole, Steeple Jack,GGray_c04.indd 386ray_c 04 .indd 386 8 8/1/2011 7:53:53 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 53 : 53 AM