{"id":3237,"date":"2017-09-29T15:31:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T15:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/?p=3237"},"modified":"2017-09-29T15:31:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T15:31:30","slug":"marianne-moore-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.suzannechurchill.com\/eng394-f17\/2017\/09\/29\/marianne-moore-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Marianne Moore"},"content":{"rendered":"

750 Word Narrative: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1887 in the manse of the Presbyterian church in Kirkland Missouri where her maternal grandfather was pastor, Marianne Craig Moore never met her father, who suffered a nervous breakdown and been institutionalized before her birth. Moore, her mother, and her brother lived together (moving sporadically) until 1905, when Moore began attending Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania (Gale). It was there that Moore published her first poems and, Hicok argues, developed a feminist rhetoric centered on the notion of the \u201cmodern woman\u201d that is later evident in Moore\u2019s poems \u201cBlack Earth\u201d and \u201cPeter\u201d (Hicok 485).\u00a0 It was also at Bryn Mawr that Moore began to explore both her infatuation with the biology of animal forms (which later manifested itself in poems like \u201cA Jellyfish\u201d) and her desire for women: interestingly, despite her many relationships with women, Moore herself never called herself a lesbian (Gale, Kent 184).<\/p>\n

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Moore graduated from college in 1909 and in 1918, after seeing some of her poems published in the avant-garde little magazine Others <\/em>and taking a trip to visit its publisher Alfred Kreymborg and his circle (including Mina Loy), Moore moved to New York City\u2019s Greenwich Village with her mother (Miller). From 1921-1925, Moore worked at the Hudson branch of the New York Public Library. During her employment at the library, Moore took a trip (1922) to Bremerton, Washington to visit her brother (Hadas). While she was there, Moore climbed Mount Rainer and was inspired to start two of her most well-known poems, \u201cAn Octopus\u201d and \u201cMarriage\u201d (Kent). In 1924, an extended book of Moore\u2019s poetry that included fifty-three poems was published in the United States under the title Observations. <\/em>In the same year, Moore won a $2000 award for achievement in poetry from the little magazine The Dial <\/em>(Gale).<\/p>\n

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The time after Moore\u2019s move and before her trip was the time of greatest overlap with Mina Loy. Loy had reportedly disclosed to William Carlos Williams that that during her visit to New York \u201cMarianne was the only one whose poetry she had feared\u201d (Burke 291). Thus, Williams\u2019s decision to construct them as foils in some public remarks he made in 1920 was no accident: a rivalry began but, as Burke tells us in her biography of Loy, mostly because of their male counterparts pitting them against one another ceaselessly. It was suspected, however, that Moore (though her work was comparable to Loy\u2019s) felt inadequate in comparison to Loy\u2019s beauty and presence at literary events. This must have been what presumably prompted her to write \u201cThose Various Scalpels\u201d \u201cabout Mina\u2019s image[1]<\/a> in literary circles\u201d (Burke 292). While Loy and Moore preferred to keep their distance (as indicated by the by Moore\u2019s narrator\u2019s distance in \u201cThose Various Scalpels\u201d), in January of 1920, Mina and McAlmon did visit Moore in Greenwich Village. There is not much written about that meeting but, it was later restaged in McAlmon\u2019s Post-Adolescence<\/em>. Despite what McAlmond tells us was an awkward meeting and a forced rivalry, it was ultimately undeniable \u201cMina and Marianne maintained a wary respect for each other\u201d (Burke 294).<\/p>\n

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Upon ending her time at the library in 1925, Moore replaced Scofeild Thayer as editor of The Dial<\/em>, a positon she held until the magazine was discontinued 1929. During her time as editor, Moore\u2019s poem \u201cA Graveyard\u201d appeared in the Anthologie de la nouvelle po\u00e9sie<\/em> as her first work to be translated into a foreign language. After The Dial <\/em>ended, Moore and her mother moved to Brooklyn and Moore stopped writing until, in 1933, she was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from\u00a0Poetry, which gained her national attention and spurred her to renewed creativity. 1935 saw the publication of a new volume of poems entitled Selected Poems, <\/em>which received many praises from her peers but sold poorly (Gale). That same year, Moore also met poet Elizabeth Bishop and they began \u201cintense, sometimes tense, sometimes erotic\u201d relationship (Kent 169). After several publications in the 1940s, Moore was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing in 1945 and, a year later, a $1,000 grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. With this money, Moore began meticulously translating the\u00a0Fables choisies, mises en vers\u00a0<\/em>by Jean de La Fontaine. This project took almost a decade, and Moore suffered a great loss of confidence when it was rejected by the first publishing firm to which she submitted (Gale).<\/p>\n

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In 1947, Moore\u2019s mother died. Besides Moore\u2019s time in college, they had lived together for nearly all of Moore\u2019s life and, she had relied heavily on her mother\u2019s guidance for revising her poetry. The loss of her mother, in fact, left her briefly unsure of her abilities (Kent). This was remedied, however, when in 1952 she won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award (Gale). In 1954, her translations of Fables of La Fontaine <\/em>appeared on the market, quickly followed by an anthology of critical essays on writers and authors Moore had written (Predilections) <\/em>another anthology of poetry (O to be a Dragon<\/em>, 1959) (Hicok).<\/p>\n

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In the 60s, Moore emerged into popular culture \u201cas somewhat of a celebrity [\u2026] tricorn hat and black cape became her personal insignia at public events,\u201d (Gale) was featured in Life, <\/em>the New York Times, <\/em>the New Yorker<\/em>, and was asked by Ford Motor Company to suggest a name for a new series of cars. In 1966, Moore returned to Greenwich Village. In 1968, she suffered a series of strokes and she lived a very secluded life until she died in her sleep on February 5th<\/sup> 1972 (Miller).<\/p>\n

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Bio-Template: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Name<\/em>: Marianne Craig Moore<\/p>\n

Date of Birth<\/em>: November 15, 1887<\/p>\n

Place of Birth<\/em>: Kirkland, Missouri<\/p>\n

Date of Death<\/em>: February 5, 1972<\/p>\n

Place of Death<\/em>: 35 West 9th<\/sup> Street, apartment 7B. Greenwich Village, New York City, New York.<\/p>\n

Country of origin, citizenship<\/em>: United States of America<\/p>\n

Gender<\/em>: Female<\/p>\n

Race<\/em>: White\/Caucasian<\/p>\n

Kind of Artist\/Cultural worker<\/em>: Poet, critic, and translator. \u201cSelf-identified (spinster) daughter and modernist poet\u201d (Kent 184).<\/p>\n

Address in Florence or New York<\/em>:<\/p>\n