Marianne Moore(1887–1972)
Poetry
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 in
it after all, a p l a c e for the g e n u i n e .
H a n d s that c a n grasp, eyes
that c a n dilate, hair that c a n rise
if it must, these things are important not because 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 a d m i r e what
we c a n n o t u n d e r s t a n d : the bat
holding on u p s i d e down or in q u e s t of s o m e t h i n g to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels
a flea, the base-
ball fan, the s t a t i s t i c i a n —
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and
school-books; 4 all these phenomena are important. One must make a
distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is
not poetry,
nor till the poets a m o n g us c a n be
"literalists of
the i m a g i n a t i o n " 5 — a b o v e
insolence a n d triviality a n d c a n p r e s e n t
for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we
have it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its r a w n e s s a n d
that which is on the other h a n d
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
1921