All the Small Things: A Close Read of Marianne Moore’s “Poetry”

You are struck by an ever present feeling of quirkiness when you begin to read Marianne Moore’s poems, but soon you’re assaulted by a sense of gravity, wisdom, heartbreak, a little tongue-in-cheek, the boring—wait, was that a quote from a different work of literature, and did she really write an ode to an octopus?

Moore’s complexity of emotions, voices, and descriptions can create an overwhelming disorientation, a profound sense of awe, and the question of, “Why is she talking about this again?” all at once.

In an interview with The Paris Review, Moore stated, “What I write, as I have said before, could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.” The combination of the nature of her poems and her poetic philosophy may be why Moore decided to categorize poetics for herself in her poem about poetry—adroitly titled, “Poetry.”

Her interview statement echoes the opening of this poem, when she states, “I, too, dislike it: there are things important beyond all this.” Suddenly, we are hit with enjambment, as though Moore is hesitating, considering how best to describe what actually is “this,” and she lands on “fiddle.” Fiddle: the most frivolous sounding word someone could use to describe the trivial and tedious.

So why is she writing the poem? What is even happening here? If you dislike poetry so much, Miss Moore, and you even think—dare I say—that it is in fact silly, then why are we here?

But as the poem continues Moore tells the reader to look closer to see “a place for the genuine” within poetry. After this point the poem becomes a justification for why poetry—in particular, the poetry she is partial to—even in all its fiddling, its frivolities, and probably even because of these very qualities, is something honest and of importance.

Poetry is not important because we are able to extract certain pretentious prophetic elocutions from the verse, as when she says, “important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them.” But rather, poetry is important because it is “useful.”

Earlier in the poem she catalogues why poetry is genuine because it contains “hands that can grasp, eyes/that can dilate, hair that can rise.” It is significant that she chose these items because at first they seem mundane and unworthy of notice. They are simply bodily functions that occur in the background, doing what they are supposed to be doing. But these functions are necessary. They are useful. They are worthy of notice and concentration and description because their very existence helps survival. Poems help you hold things more tightly, see things more clearly, and feel things more intensely.

Moore not only categorizes what good poetry entails, but she brings up why the fiddle can sometimes seem “unintelligible” or, frankly, not like poetry at all. She states there must be an admiration and respect for the small, the unnoticed, the unpoetic, “the bat holding on upside down…a tireless wolf…the statistician”—essentially, coming to the conclusion that everything carries poetic potential. Moore’s “contempt for it” arises only when “half poets,” who hold no admiration for those small things and who don’t consider “these phenomena…important,” attempt to create verse until it becomes “so derivative as to become unintelligible.” These unskilled poets are simply copying and withdrawing other people’s words for the things they don’t understand because they don’t think they are worthy to be understood.

Even Moore’s lineation contributes to the meaning of “Poetry.” Almost every line is an enjambment, occurring also between stanzas. This forces the reader to slow down, creating anticipation, surprise, and strangeness. When she ends in the middle of a sentence, it makes the reader question where she might be taking them. The reader is forced to concentrate on the simple, mundane, and “this fiddle” until it creates a sense of wonder in them—an admiration even—and they notice the importance of the small minutiae.

The voice of the poem also emphasizes Moore’s content. The voice moves fluidly from sympathetic, “I, too,” to lecturing, “One must make a/distinction,” to beautifully poetic, “imaginary gardens with real toads.” This fluctuating and all-inclusive voice—even drawing in quotations from others as if in a formal essay—reinforces the idea that “nor is it valid to discriminate against business documents and school-books’; all these phenomena are important.”

Poetry, for Moore, should be anti-discrimination. In addition, there should be a reverence for all the various subjects, objects, ands forms poetry contains, recognizing their authenticity and significance even in their most primitive states. By coming to this recognition, you can finally appreciate the truth poets create from “the raw materials of poetry.”