Poetry

BY MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)

 Author’s Background

• Marianne Moore was an American modernist poet.

• In 1921, her 1st book on poetry was published titled Poems.
• She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1951.
• Her poems frequently featured imagery from nature.
• “Poetry,” is one of her most highly regarded but controversial poems
 Modernism

What does the word “modern” mean to you? What do you associate with it?
• The Modernist era is characterized by industrialization, capitalism, rapid
social change, advances in science, WW1, and its aftermath.

• The enormity of the war undermined humankind’s faith in the

foundations of society and culture, religion, and morality.

• Modernism rejected Romantic ideas

Modern writers:
• Rejected traditional ideas of the past

• Rejected diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological

breakthroughs and global violence.

• Rejected with Romantic sentimentality, exaggerations, and the notion of

the sublime.
 Characteristics of Modern Poetry

• Stylistic experimentation and disrupted syntax

• To free poetry from the strictures of metrical patterns
• To approximate more closely the rhythms of colloquial diction
• To describe the natural flow of a person’s thoughts
• To deal directly with what's being talked about, without fancy words and
phrases to talk about it