The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore [Mass Market Paperback]

Marianne Moore (Author), Patricia Willis (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There are few poets whose complete prose one would want to own. Yet in this fat volume of over 400 pieces, written between 1907 and 1972 roughly half when Moore was a writer for and later the editor of the prestigious magazine Dialthere's not one piece that doesn't arrest by virtue of its perspicacity, intensity and extraordinary compactness of expression. There are long reviews of such major contemporary poets as Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Cummings and Auden, plus one on Henry James; essays on a wide variety of topics including philosophy, biography, painting, linguistics and anything that caught Moore's interest, from fashion to the circus; short reviews and "notices" of books; and a bit of fiction. The hallmarks of Moore's critical style are a brilliant use of quotation, an unfailing responsiveness to the subtleties of poetic sound and sense, and an almost constant ability to surprise. This is the prose work of a poet who was, as she put it, "incurably interested in writing" and addicted to its element of "personal adventure."
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Except for letters, interviews, quotations, and material she herself did not see to press, this book includes all of Moore's published prose. The editor arranges items in four sections by chronological order"The Early Years," "The Dial," "The Middle Years," and "The Later Years"and places shorter works like letters to the editor, dust jacket blurbs, booklists, questionnaires, and other shorter works in an appendix. Moore's end notes are included, and place and date of publication are given for each item. Readers of Moore's poetry will be delighted to discover in this collection a writer who charms by the purity of her prose as well as by the scope of her interests and the penetration of her perceptions. Recommended for general and for literary collections. Walter Waring, Professor Emeritus, English Dept., Kalamazoo Coll., Mich.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 723 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140094369
• ISBN-13: 978-0140094367
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,940,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sage for the ages, April 13, 2010

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dylanissimus "dylanissimus" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (Mass Market Paperback)

"We dare not let ourselves be snared into hating hatefulness," wrote Marianne Moore in one of her essays. "To do so is to take our own lives."

What can be said about this Presbyterian sage in the tri-cornered hat, Brooklyn's Confucius (by way of Kirkwood, Missouri and Bryn Mawr)? She had one of the most enchanting minds in a century filled with enchanting minds. She had a knack for proverbs and distinctions. "Satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy." And somewhat primly, she would insist on the difference between liberty and license. But she knew that "ethical sins are not poetic sins" and placed great importance -- rebuking herself slightly? -- on becoming "liberalized in your judgment."

She wrote on politics, finding it "impossible to reprehend" President Eisenhower. She wrote on fashion, producing the wonderful sentence, "A narrow sheath or pant (if I may use the word) does not set a hippomoid figure off to advantage." And of course, she wrote on poetry and literature in a tone of resolute positiveness that was not blind to faults but merciful to them. One thinks that a "bad" review from Miss Moore would be more thoughtful, and therefore worth more, than a good review from any number of her contemporaries. About the now-largely-forgotten figure Maxwell Bodenheim (or was it Vachel Lindsay?), she wrote that one "must deplore his lack of esthetic rigor." She placed great importance on "governance of the emotions," yet knew that poetry "is not a thing of tunes, but of heightened consciousness."

She was the supreme mistress of litotes, using double negatives to make a tentative positive. "Not unaware" instead of "aware" -- and she humbly poked fun at herself for this tendency, quoting George Orwell against herself: "the not ungreen grass." But she would take the tendency of double, or multiple, negatives to a comic extreme, as when she wrote of Cummings and Williams that they "do not balk at anything like unprudishness."

She was the furthest thing from a cynic that one could possibly find. "How discuss verity with cynics," she lamented once, "cynicism being a plant with no fruit or interesting seed?" Miss Moore gave us hundreds of these gentle incontrovertibilities.