Aimless Reading: The M's, Part 53 (Marianne Moore)

Complete Poems, a photo by Michael_Kelleher on Flickr.

Moore, Marianne
Complete Poems

I think I bought this at the late, lamented Discount Book Store at the Niagara Falls Outlet Mall.

I have a memory of having bought it to replace an older copy, which had been given to me as a gift. The gift, however, was tarnished. A used copy, heavily highlighted and annotated, completely useless to me. When I saw a nice, clean copy for a couple of dollars at the discount book store, I couldn't say no.

Opening the book this morning, I felt a wave of nostalgia. I miss reading Marianne Moore. When I first encountered modernist poetry in college, she was the only woman we read -- Stein was never on the reading list, though she was mentioned, I think, at least I knew who she was -- and her work was so different than Pound, Eliot and Williams.

But of course she got short shrift among all those men, even though the teacher was a woman. We spent about a week on MM's complete poems, and we spent at least that much time talking about "The Red Wheelbarrow." I think we spent half a semester on "The Wasteland." To be fair, though, Pound got shorted as well -- "just too difficult to unpack in such a short time."

In honor of opening day this Thursday, here's a link to her poem "Baseball and Writing."