Moore and Eliot

When I read Marianne Moore’s “Poetry” I am put in mind of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” I don’t know exactly why. I think it has more to do with the way the language and articulation makes me feel, sort of the essence of it, rather than the substance.

Moore is speaking specifically of ‘the thing’ – the poem, poetry itself. Trying to articulate something ineffable. She brings attention to that ephemeral thing that is poetry. Eliot does something similar. Particularly in the opening of “Burnt Norton” the first of The Four Quartets:

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.” (1-8)

I find these some of the most beautiful lines in the world of poetry. They are a continuous door into the unknown, the ephemeral, into something I may just be aware of beyond my consciousness. Sometimes I have thought of these lines as relates to spiritual matters. Sometimes as relates to relationships. Sometimes just in terms of abstract notions of literature and art.

“I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important

beyond all this fiddle.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,

one discovers that there is in

it after all, a place for the genuine.

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise
 
if it must, these things are important not be-
 
cause a


high sounding interpretation can be put upon them

but because they are
 
useful; when they become so derivative as to
    
become unintelligible, the
 
same thing may be said for all of us – that we
  
do not admire what
       
we cannot understand.” (1-10)

Here Moore is doing the same thing, opening a door into the world of impermanence with words, language and style that is temporal and tangible – hands grasping, pupils dilating, hair rising. Yet what is the focus or cause of these tangible enlightenments is something as abstract and “unintelligible” as a poem.

“Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,

Along the empty alley, into the box circle,

To look down into the drained pool.” (23-35)

Exquisite formal language, evoking a formal garden, Eliot could also be talking about a poem, or about poetry in general. Dignified and invisible the words and symbols of a poem are like “unheard music hidden in the shrubbery” and roses that have “the look of flowers that are looked at” can be a very poetic way of describing the very process of analyzing poetry. Then the idea that we are the guests, invited into the poem, moving in a formal pattern. I don’t believe that is what Eliot was talking about, but when reading Moore’s poem I think of these words.

“One must make a distinction
    
however: when dragged into prominence by half
poets,
                
the result is not poetry,
    
nor till the autocrats among us can be
        
"literalists of
        
the imagination" – above
            
insolence and triviality and can present


for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads
                
in them, shall we have
    
it.” (17-24)

I like how Moore cautions against over abstracting poetry until it no longer has “real toads” but the process of creating such poetry is hard. Not everyone can do it. I like to think that her language of “literalists of the imagination” is applicable to Eliot. His language is beautiful, but also shimmers with reality.

“Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.” (37-43)

Here it is birds, rather than toads, but as one reads the first part of “Burnt Norton” I think it is easy to see that Moore’s paean for “real toads” is answered.

Works Cited:
Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems 1909-1962, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York. 1963

Moore, Marianne. “Poetry.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, Robert O'Clair. New York: Norton, 2003. 438-439. Print