Modernism in Two Poems by Marianne Moore

IntroductionThe most serious poetry today is console modernist. upstartism in literature is non easilysummarized, precisely the pick up elements be experimentation, anti- authoritativeism, individualism, and a streticuloendothelial systems on the cerebral rather than emotional aspects (Wills 24). To some extent, Marianne Moores rimes The Fish and A carve truly follow the discussed modernist principles, solely it is difficult to agree that Moore altogether denies emotiveness and replaces it with modernist cerebral attributes. As a result, it is mathematical to assume that The Fish and A severe be the cardinal examples of non- tralatitious modernist writing, in which experimentation, realism, and individualism are combined with unusual writing techniques, complicated meter structure, and extreme emotiveness.To start with, The Fish and A Grave display brilliant similarities in the tone of voice of writing, and the use of similar images. The barnacles which encrust the gradient of the swan in The Fish are evidently similar and are some parallel to the blades of the oars / moving together the like the feet of water-spiders in A Grave the unpleasant and almost tragic character of water in both(prenominal) meters is captious to under(a) footing the modernist implications of both poetic plant. However, in order to completely realize the scope and signification of Moores modernist verses, we should analyze each poem separately. ingeminate / evidence has proved that it can equal / on what can non revive / its youth. The nautical grows grey-headed in it (Moore 32). This is where we face the complicatedness and incomprehension of modernist poetry. What did Moore want to say with this course? Is it that she imagined temperament in its full purposefulness which was not characteristic of traditional classical poetry? It is more probable that a thirty-year-old poet was striving to submit her sympathies with the spirit, which she persistently affected as deeply abused.The description of natures violence, its wholeness, the sea as the stemma of physical injury and actually a threat to a gentle life these are the signs of modernism in Moores writing. Having depicted nature as the threat of violence, Moore risked causing misinterpretation of the literary and sensual implications in The Fish. For many a(prenominal) of those who score remove The Fish, violence in poetry may ab initio seem inappropriate and confusing. Yet this is not a readers mistake Moore was really trying to show the nature in its big businessman which bordered on violence against human beings. The water drives a wedge / of iron with the iron edge / of the cliff, and the external marks of abuse (Moore 32) is the combining of natures violence and the violence against nature it is the combination of the dickens incompatible elements, which is the distinguishing blow of poetic modernism.The modernism of The Fish is in that Moore was actually tryi ng to combine the incompatible images, allusions, implications, and ideas. The initially incompatible conjunction of accidental and purposeful is another(prenominal) distinguishing feature of modernism in Moores poem. Criticizing Moores works, Heuving indites that it should not be surprising that the chasm side is dead, but if the chasm side is dead, ravaged as it clear has been by the stuff of water it contains, how does it live on the barnacles that adhere to its turn out? Why does the ocean, clearly the most active and powerful force in this pic, grow old within this teeming shelter? (29)Moore neither answers these questions, nor provides the reader with a individual(a) opportunity to find these answers anywhere else within the poem. The reader finds him self in the mute motion of the under sea world, with which he is hardly familiar, and which seems even more weighed down and complicated through Moores descriptions All / external / marks of abuse are present on this / de fiant edifice (Moore 32).Moore writes her poem in a way to create an image of sinister beauty of the sea she describes. The one shot method of birth control of her poetic lines does not break the smooth and threatening movement of the undersea. The eightsome stanzas of the poem display the evident and easily noticeable repetition of the consonants, as if waves create a cyclic sound pattern. Whereupon the stars, / pink, / rice-grains, ink-/ bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green / lilies and submarine / toadstools, slide each on the other (Moore 32).While the sea is the central image in The Fish, A Grave is the expression of Moores impossible action to see this sea. Some man look foring into the sea seems to close the slew from those who fall in as much right to it as / you have it to yourself (Moore 49). A Grave is frequently interpreted as the expression of Moores feminism Moore calls caution to two difficulties here the problem of rendering through a man, including a m ans viewpoint, and the link problem of establishing herself as a centered speaker when she cannot stand in the middle of this (Wills 110). However, modernism of A Grave is not in its feminist expressions, but rather in the opacity of its meanings and the confusion of mixed symbolic implications similar to those in The Fish.Modernism in poetry is invariably associate to difficulties of interpretation, and these interpretation difficulties and ambiguities are evident in both The Fish and A Grave. Moore has been extremely individual in her modernist expressions, and the poetic structure of A Grave again suggests that poetic modernism may and probably should exist in the area of extreme emotions. The sense of crisis makes both poems similarly modernist the description of nature and its scenes are central to both poems, and it is very probable that Moore seeks resolution of her crisis in those natural sceneries.The wrinkles progress among themselves in a army beautiful / under networ ks of foam, / and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the / seaweed (Moore 49). The two poems seem to create a single line of natures threat and power. This trigger-happy line of nature is developed in The Fish, where Moore emphasizes the threat of nature towards a man this line of natures abuse reaches its climax in A Grave, where Moore asserts that the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave (Moore 49).The rhythm of Moores A Grave is another display of modernism in her poetry. Moore seems to pass oer her rhythms and stanzas with almost painful desire to keep the rhyme. The reader is frequently haunt by an impression that the rhythm of the poem prevails over its meaning. Yet, modernist writings are traditionally characterized by unusual and often difficult rhymes. The combination of multifactorial stanzas with complicated meanings and literary implications makes certain works of modernist writing completely incomprehensible.This is not the case with Marianne Moore. Each line makes the rhymes enervated, and creates an unusual combination of the seas threat and fixture the birds swim through the air at top sped, emitting cat-calls and the ocean, under the musical rhythm of lighthouses and noise of / bell-buoys, / advances as usual, looking as if it wee not that ocean in which / dropped things are echo to sink (Moore 49). The heavy contrast in this passage creates the impression of a deceptive revelation one ability think that the sea and its threats were unreal and were produced by an ill mind.However, it is a surface feeling a Man and the sea are real. The word intelligence with which Moore concludes her poem, is the ultimate expression of her position against the described Man and against the sea as the grave for humanity. Moore reserves her climactic position for the spirit of attentiveness to self and to other which is her highest aesthetic and moral value, while free her sea the stand word, the last hiss (Martin 63) .ConclusionPoetic modernism was traditionally viewed as the combination of several critical attributes poetic individualism, self-expression, complicatedness of writing, and emotional indifference. Moore has completely denied these approaches poetic modernism cannot live without emotions. On the contrary, Moores modernism in itself stems from the climactic emotions the poet wanted to express and to verbalise to her reader. Poetic modernism of Marianne Moore is something more than the self-expression and the description of individualistic regressions. In Moores hands modernism becomes global, challenging, and almost revolutionary. For many of us the sea and its threats will look as the end of everything, A Grave for humanity yet, in Moores trance it is only the beginning of everything that is meaningful to a person.Works CitedHeuving, J. Omissions Are Not Accidents grammatical gender in the Art of Marianne Moore. Detroit,Wayne State, 1992.Martin, T. Marianne Moore Subversive Moder nist. Austin University of Texas Press, 1986.Moore, M. A Grave. In M. Moore, Complete Poems, Penguin Classics, 1994, p. 49.Moore. M. The Fish. In M. Moore, Complete Poems, Penguin Classics, 1994, pp. 32.Wills, P. Marianne Moore Woman and Poet. National verse Foundation, Inc., 1990.Modernism In Two Poems By Marianne MooreMarianne Moore was one of the eminent poetesses of the Modern times. An integral contributor to the modern American literature, Moores poetry is considered as a linkage between nature and the human world. She alludes to scientific and historic knowledge and tries to evade literary allusions to prevent her from being casted as a stereo-type. Her poems are full of keen observations and generally hold up the images of birds, butterflies, animals, landscapes of England and peeled York. She is a literalist of the imagination who can present for inspection ideational gardens with real toads in them.In A Grave, Moore begins with a meditation on the impossibility of seeing the sea, when a Man looking into the sea takes the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to it yourself. Moore calls attention to two difficulties here the problem of seeing through a man, including a mans viewpoint, and the related problem of establishing herself as a centered speaker when she cannot stand in the middle of this. Moores depiction of the sea correspondingly emphasizes its opacity over its semitransparency and its surface activities over its symbolic meanings.While Moore may well have create verbally this poem out of a personal crisis that involved thoughts of suicide, the speaker reminds herself that to seek relief in the sea is not to be mirrored in any improved way or to be freed of her. The speaker works her way out of her crisis by establishing and confronting the actuality or literality of the sea and of death, and her difference from them. The sea interestingly, in Moores poem is not a reflective object but a grave. Also, it is mans carefu l acts, that is, his surface activities that save him and not his self- projections. Men lowering nets unconsciously desecrate this grave, as if there were no such thing as death, the speaker of this poem, conscious of the ultimate meaning of penetrating the depths of the sea, trains her vision to the surfaceThe wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanxbeautiful under networks of foamthe tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, inmotion beneath themThe end of the poem marks its intensity. Unlike the exposition, the last lines of the lyric compel us to view the surroundings and not just concentrate on the opacity of the sea surface. A forced consciousness of the meditation on the outer scene is emphasized by the poetess. The sound of birds and bell-buoys make noises which break the ambience of a visual representation of the situation. The poem resolves with its initial perspective of assuming something as what it is not and an intrigue picture of the oceans opacity in the concluding linesand the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouse and noise ofbell buoys,advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean inwhich dropped things are bound to sinkin which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition norconsciousness.For Moore, in A Grave, meditation on the sea becomes meditation on the limits of human power and human language, and immersion, literal or figurative, threatens dissolution. Death is the central theme of the poem with an under cutting allusion to Moores own brothers death. Many critics have tried to see the poem in the light of Moores feminist voice. In the poem, as many critics believe, Moore defines the male dominium and tries to break it with her strong and coaxing words. A grave is a place where dead things are regorge to rest, but Moores A Grave is a locus of vital and challenging re-vision.The poems of Marianne Moore have arguments, often difficult to follow but always charge the effort. Distrustful of overt emotion, her poems rely on understatement and reserve to create it, as in the simple What are geezerhood? or the penetrating A Grave. What Are Years? is a stellar lyric which ends by paradoxically equating a birds joyful song with both mortality and eternity? Both the poems have a dominating sea imagery. The tone of morality in both the poems is unsurpassable. The genesis of these poems can be owed to the serviceman War II. These two poems are typical of Moores. These are not meant for the delectation of reflection.They refuse to be simpler than the world is and make more sense when read again and again until one understands the perspective for which they are written. Moore exploits imagery and visuals from the nature and embeds them in her poems. The linking of morality with a bird in What are Years? is quite similar to the theme of death and survival in A Grave. The poems deal with the strong imagery of the sea-how in one poem it is proceed and in the other, the sea is a coll ector, quick to return a avid look. The imagery of bird or flying is also present in both the poems.This imagery is evident to prove the aspiration of the speaker to be free and boundless. In both the poems, Moore indicates the seas power to grate and destroy strongly alluded in A Grave and subtly through in What are Years. A deep penetration of this concept office find its parallel to the society and humanity- the dominium of man over everything and his difference of opinion to free himself. This idea or concept might be traced to the reality War aftermath. The vulnerability of the society and the deterioration was enough to evoke the modernist flak inside Moore to conceptualize the social, political and economical conditions into a poetic expression.Many American poets see Moore as one of the monuments of modernism, up there with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens. slew and viewpoint, an integral quality of modernist poets is present in the poems of Moore as well. She once wr ote that poems were imaginary gardens with real toads in them. Her poems are conversational, yet elaborate and subtle in their syllabic versification, drawing upon extremely precise description and historical and scientific fact. A poets poet, she influenced such later poets as her young friend Elizabeth Bishop. A Grave offered Bishop, as it offers us, an example of how a woman well-versed in the literary tradition, rather than capitulating to the convention of female silence, can wield that tradition and write her own eloquent verses.To conclude, in the words of eminent literary critic, Jeredith Merrin, Her ocean/grave represents death, humanitys common enemy, and yet her sea as re-former of inherited poetic patterns acts too as Natures and Womans ally. The heavy sibilance throughout Moores poem (in all versions) reminds us of Satan, of the serpentine and treacherous ladies of Romantic poetry, of the actual foaming ocean that advances and retreats over the shingle of land, and of m ortality which menaces and circumscribes our lives.But with her insistent sound-playe.g., you cannot stand in the middle of this repression. . . is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea their bones have not lastedMoore also hisses back at Man, and at the arrogant male poet in particular, who arrogates to himself dominion, who is always trying to stand in the middle of a thing. By choosing to conclude her poem with the word consciousness, Moore reserves that climactic position for the quality of attentiveness to self and to other which is her highest aesthetic and moral value, while giving her sea (as retributive force) the last word, the last hiss.ReferencesMarianne Moorehttp//www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/96On Marianne Moores Life and Career http//www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/life.htmMarianne (Craig) Moore (1887-1972) http//www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mmoor.htmTHE POEMS OF MARIANNE MOORE http//query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2DE1F3FF937A35752C0A9629C8B63 The Collected Essays and Criticism -By Clement Greenberg, Johnhttp//books.google.com/books?id=N5yfxzOr4j8C&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=%22what+are+years%22& arising=web&ots=8EvqzAyM3v&sig=pchzURGxqaSTHBL3I-kmOagGf-gPPA85,M1