Modern American Poetry

Moore’s America 433

but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!

the letter ain psalm and calm when

pronounced with the sound of ain candle, is very noticeable, but

why should continents of misapprehension

have to be accounted for by the fact?

...

the flower and fruit of all that noted superiority—

if not stumbled upon in America,

must one imagine that it is not there?

It has never been confined to one locality.

America is a continent, able to encompass all the narrower attributes of
foreign locals. America as a “locality” is marked by regional diversity that
resists reduction to singular traits. America can embrace both a “little old
ramshackle victoria” of slow Southern gentility (in contrast to high-speed
living on the highways going West) and a cigar-smoking vulgarity of the
modern, industrial North. Moore begins by echoing the Europhiles’
complaint about America’s lack of refinement (it is as languageless as it is
linksless), but she hints of enjoyment in the qualities deplored by outsiders.
America is a place “where there are no proofreaders, no silkworms, no
digressions” (too much of a hurry). It is “the wild man’s land.” But if America
is for some characterized by the lack of nuance and cultural refinement, for
others it is about straightforward naturalness where “letters are written” “in
plain American which cats and dogs can read!” This is an extreme version of
pastoral, a wish to identify culture with nature and thus to claim cultural
innocence against European decadence. In defense against England’s
preemptive claims, Americans celebrated their originality. Such a theme of
American “naturalness” is illogical on any terms, disdainful or patriotic.
Turning the bizarre but colorful expression “raining cats and dogs” in on
itself, Moore parodies America’s notoriety as “nature’s nation”; she
nevertheless celebrates America’s idiomatic vitality. It is not, in fact, a
languageless country. Moore’s own language is anything but plain; it is full of
digressions (and obsessively proofread). Yet she shows the same affection that
Frost showed for the forceful conclusion, homely aphorism, and inventive
idiom of American speech.
A lively debate was going on at the time this poem was written about
whether there was such a thing as an “American language.” H.L. Mencken, a
critic of English hegemony but also of American dullness (“no business ever
foundered through underestimating the American intelligence,” he quipped),