The Reader's Almanac; Marianne Moore; WNYC

Recently, the Viking press proudly published a book called a Marianne Moore Reader. Its name suggests its nature. A sample of Miss Moore's work over many years, a popery of her poetry and prose, an unconventional anthology perhaps meant as an introduction to her wide-ranging mind and interest. But I suspect that it will be cherished most my long-time admirers of Miss Moore, who already have a large cache of books, pamphlets, magazines, newspaper clippings, and other memorabilia. Among these, I list myself happily. Since I bought a copy of an early book of poems, observations, in 1924, when I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and promptly became a member of a small coterie in that university town, that might have called itself, but didn't, the Marianne Moore fan club. And as other books came along, I got them too, such as Selected Poems, which came out in 1935, and Collected Poems, published in 1951. And that, I may say, took all the major literary prizes of that year, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the Ballons in Prize.

There were other books of poetry in between, and after, of course, and two of those are in the current reader, like a bulwark, and O, to be a dragon. Then there was her translation of the Fables of La Fontein in 1954, which was a milestone in translation. Some more has also been an editor of the dial, a distinguished literary journal from 1925 to 1929. Her critical work, largely done for the dial, was brought together in a book called Predelections, in 1955. Other publications were various in character, ranging from small pamphlets to a triumphant appearance on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune of a poem entitled Home Town Peace for Messers, Alston, and Reese. Miss Moore is a great booster for Brooklyn. One might think that she was born there, but no, that occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, which is a hometown of another poet, T.S. Eliot. And the date, if this be important at all, was 1887. I don't think it is, except to establish her as a member of a quadruplet,

a well-loved elder poet in this country. The other three, of course, being Sandberg, Frost, and Williams. I should like to focus first on a Marianne Moore reader, and then we can get farther afield, if we like. Now, how did this book come to be? It has something of the air of its idea having been hatched in the mind of a publisher, not the author. Now, is this true, in fact? Well, both. The lure of the paperback is responsible. I've always wanted a low price book, a little thing, that I, or anyone else, could buy several copies of, without becoming bankrupt. And when I asked how I liked to have a paperback, I said, oh, yes. Thinking of selected verse, and just my best, without a more questionable pieces. This book is then going to turn into a paperback sometime. Yes, it is.

And I have said, well, have it paperback first in hardcover? Oh, no, no. We can't do that. I suppose there must have been some disagreement about what should go into a book of this kind. Any two people would make up a book with very different contents. I'm sure. Did you, I mean, meaning all of you who are involved? Start with some inevitable choices? Well, in the first place. I thought of certain obscure pieces that had never been read by most of my friends. And I thought, well, that may have been better than what I am offering now. Perhaps I could include those. And then I had not anticipated prose in the book at all. I thought it was first. And I was consulted about that matter. And so I decided, well, it could be a kind of miscellaneous, but a very rigidly selected miscellaneous.

And then I take a great interest in one or two not very orthodox pieces. My one on the new poets, the new poets, which I wish to emphasize should have been called new poets, a new American poets. And then George Plimpton's book on pitching to an old star exhibition team of batters. And I enjoyed writing that very much. And I thought I'd put that in. So you've included two full books, as I mentioned earlier, and those came, I suppose, from the collected poems or others came from the collected poems. Now, on what principles did you make those choices? The collected poems were the nucleus of the thing. I consented to ask the McMillan company, let me reprint 18 or 20 pieces. And I thought it would be greedy to take more, because then these plates that they set to store by,

wouldn't be used, or any use, it wouldn't sell anything. And I was quite scrupulous about that. And I said, I'm not going to go beyond 20 pieces. And I liked the jibur as well as any of my animal pieces. But I thought I'd better leave it. Do you think it would have been safe to put in your own favorites? Or would it have been better, perhaps, to put in one as apparently the favorite poems of your audience? Well, I think no. I think my own pieces are the ones that I myself, rather than the favorites of the audiences, because an audience does not concern itself with technicalities. You may have hazard regrettable or tedious phrases, or unripe views you've thought over, you wish to alter. And then sometimes an audience is amused by what it ought not to be amused by.

And that's rather a grave discipline, remarked by that. And I think you should withstand undue pressure. Well, how sound is an audience's judgment? Do you seem to suggest a little uncertainty about the audience's judgment in these words? Well, no. I think very sound about what is tuneful and about what is honest, what is wholesome. And certainly people cannot decode with non-secretes and the obscurities. He is no guarantee of death. And although a sense of mystery is necessary, Mr. Arden says, in every point, there's an element of the riddle. Still, there should not be an untruthed tendency to be mystifying. If I could use an example of another poet, I suppose that Robert Frost must be pretty sure. His audience is one to hear him say either mending wall or stopping by woods on a snowy evening.

And if he were making up an anthology, he would undoubtedly put those two poems in. Now, is there a comparable poem or poems which has such popularity among your readers? No, hardly. I wouldn't say so. Although, which I was speaking, seems to tempt the people, the pictures, to send me pictures and data corroborating characteristics that I mentioned in the piece. And then, to transcribe what are years and indistrust of merits which I don't regard as a poem technically at all, though it's honesty, motion, and perhaps that matters more than my comedian. Do you think that audiences tend to like the easier poems and perhaps the simpler ones? Yes, they do. And I do too, I think.

Well, I'm as more I know that our present audience is hoping, even expecting me to ask you to read several of the poems that are printed in this book. And I hope you will do just that. Perhaps this is a time to ask you to do it. I'll let you make the choice of which one or ones you would like to read for the audience. Well, suppose I read a face. I am not treacherous, callous, jealous, superstitious, superstitious, venomous, or absolutely hideous, studying and studying its expression, exasperated desperation, or at no real impasse, would gladly break the glass, the mirror. When love of order, order, insecurity, simplicity, or all one needs to be, certain faces, a few, one or two, or one face, photographed by recollection to my mind, to my sight, must remain a delight. Then should I read them, what are years?

Yes, I wish you would. What are years? What is our innocence? What is our guilt? Oh, I say it. Oh, oh, I make it. None is safe. And when this courage, the unanswered question, the resolute doubt, the only calling, deathly listening, the name is fortune even death, and courage is others, and in its defeat, stirs the soul to be strong. He sees deep and is glad, who exceeds to mortality, and in his imprisonment, rises upon himself as the sea and the chasm struggling to be free and unable to be, in its surrendering, finds its continuing. So, he who strongly feels and behaves, the very bad grown tall as he sings, steals his form straight up, though he is captive. His mighty singing says, satisfaction is a lonely thing.

How pure a thing is joy. This is mortality. This is eternity. It's a very wise poem. It would repay a great deal of rereading, I suspect. Well, thank you. Have you another that you would read for us? Well, a little one. I may, I might, I must. If you will tell me why the pen appears impossible, I then will tell you why I think that I can get across it if I try. The title I may, I must, that's a significant part. And then one and two of my fables, I translate La Fontaine's fables in Rome, from French into English, and the hen who laid the golden eggs, so I read that. Yes, I wish you would. Take all this is there, and for the increment, is the truth too clear for argument, in the old fairy tale, in which golden eggs were laid, one a day.

The poor owner would stare at the hen, to ensure there was gold in her to share, then killed, spread out the bird. And of course, was repaid by no more than would be found in an ordinary hen. He had cut the magic chain and she'd never lay again. Think of this when covetous. Well, thank you, Miss Mordz. It's good to have the author read his own verse. I think it is us bred as it should be, as it was conceived and planned. And tested to be. The voice doesn't matter whether it's strong or weak, whether it's organ tone like dillentomuses or thin or cultivated or natural doesn't matter at all. But it will have the poet's emphasis. Now, the ordinary reader, I think, reads out of a background of reading prose. Or he reads verse which Rolex along in an even measured way. He isn't ready for alterations in emphasis or in tone or any unusual character of sound or imagery. It's the poet who will make the difference in the poetry that has a difference.

And I would say myself at any rate. And I wonder if you agree that all good poetry has a difference in it. Now, that's conspicuously true of your own poetry, Miss Mordz, seems to me. Every poem has a difference in it. Well, thank you very much. That individuality would like not to be a replica of just anything you want to read. Now, someone has said, and I believe it was Randall Jarell, that you, and this is a quote, not only can, but must make poetry out of everything and anything. Now, this is a lovely and an impressive thing to have said at one's work. But, of course, there may be some degree of, what shall I say, exuberant exaggeration in that remark. Yet I do want to ask you how close to the actual truth was Mr. Jarell's sailing when he said that in your opinion. Well, that is a striking statement.

I think you're saying about them in the way of all flesh. He said, you have master's treatment, you usually have master's content. And Mr. Arden, in his inaugural address at Oxford, said, a poem should praise all it can. Now, my own rule is be affirmative, with a touch of satire, perhaps, but no denigration, no revenges, no sense of rivalry, and Robert Frost corroborates that also, praise something or be thankful for something communicated to someone. It seems to me, you cannot write out of desire to get even with or to harm anyone else. You feel? Yes, I agree to that. I like your emphasis upon affirmation, that strong and positive, I think the ordinary reader even,

who is not prepped even trained to the reading of poetry, will be happy when you strike an affirmative note. I think they're grateful, they're trying to think the best and will come of people. Now, I'd like to take a case in point here, especially as it relates to that, everything and anything out of which you can make poetry. I dare say that only your most intimate and knowledgeable friends could have expected you to write that poem celebrating the Brooklyn Dodgers and other poems that are concerned with sport or sports figures. And there was one very recently in the New Yorker, I believe, another sports poem, yes, yes. And anyone who has read hometown piece knows, was certainly that this was written out of a full knowledge and familiarity, not out of research. I would guess, I don't know, but I want to ask you, I would assume that you've been at Ebbersfield maybe many times, and that's what I want to ask. How deep is your dedication to or interest in baseball, or were you so much a Dodger fan that this interest is now behind you in time, and the zest for this subject is gone?

Oh, I know, the Dodgers are still in my favorites. And I can choose to take my mind nice off the game, the game which I watch on television usually, rather than from a season stand, sorry to say. I've only been at Ebbersfield once, and Roy Cavanaugh was catching for a cospooner. And in a very urgent way, he hastened toward the mound, and after a few words of conversation, he gave a cospooner a little pat or to be exact, a little farther than his spank, and he was hurried back in his bulky way. His style is stopped as one of the reporters said, hurried back, and began to crouch down again. And when I was a child, we had rather ragged little team of neighbors, boys, and I was tolerated to also join, always afraid of being hit by a pitch, and wasn't as my technique was wretched.

But the game here, an interest in the game, I think I was a right fielder. Interested in those post-game interviews when the big ball player, Plyton, says, and what you play, says the children. Does the fact that you published a poem on the Yankees indicate that you have switched your allegiance at least in part? No, someone said, I'm glad you've seen the light. I haven't seen the light at all. But no, always a candle in the window for the dodges. I think where Epic and Justice was done, this was when the mayor didn't hold on to the team when Mr. Rockefeller was going to help us. But really, I'm so interested in the technique of it, the matter of the timing and the extreme ability and the modesty of the players, I confess that I'm a fan of half a dozen teams.

And in writing this thing about the Yankees, I felt I couldn't prepare to highlight the good players and all the teams. The Yankees line in Harlan Killer Group and Herb Score and those two McDowell boys are the Cardinals, not the men's and the M's and the C's. I can see a student of the game, all right. Well, I'm interested in the certain points like that of your arm. You may have two true and arm in pitching right across the plate to have to cast the corners. That seems a refinement of the art. I hate to drop this subject, but there's another one that I want to ask you something about. I was very pleased to note that that correspondence between the Ford Motor Company and you has been included in the reader. It deserved to be preserved. And here it is. I wonder if you've got anything that you would like to comment, make any footnotes, let us say to that correspondence, which appears in your book. Anything that you want to say now about it, now that it's history.

Well, I was fascinated. Advertising seemed to be spoken of with tolerance and denigratingly. I think it's a very great art. And I like the Ford Company's combination of formality and the spree, that little particularistic way they had of mentioning technical matters, decorously racy. But it was a terrible disappointment to me that they did not think, I didn't please them with the silver sword as a title, as a name for the elegant car, the counterpoint part of the Thunderbird. I've always been interested in advertising, and when you see the possibilities expand in imagination, not silver sword, it could be infinitely played upon, heart upon, in the pictures of the car. Now, I wonder whether there's much difference in the ease or the difficulty with which you write poetry and prose. There's a good deal of prose in this book, almost as much as poetry, which comes more naturally to you.

I thought to ask you this, right after I had re-read your foreword to the reader, because that seems to have been composed in the same way as many of your poems, maybe most of them. There's differentness in this prose, your own stamp upon it. It should be true when anybody writes anything, I suppose. And you say succinctly and precisely and hence with a certain kind of beauty what you want to say. Of course, I'm not saying that prose is also poetry, but it can come close, can't it? Well, thank you. And that's very sustaining that idea that I come somewhere near it. I think one does. Those can be poetry in a Yates' autobiography, in Ruskin, and Stephen Spender said the difference. Some pedantic listeners said to him, I understood you to say that there's no difference between prose and poetry. Spender said, well, if I didn't say that, I didn't mean to. He said, I would say that in poetry, the word is not the words are not replaceable. And I think that's rather incisive, designing.

I think in writing verse, you aren't concerned with your subconscious. It tells you what to say. And in writing prose, you're responsible and you're thinking, you're conscious. So often in reading manuscript you say, well, this won't do, this isn't poetry, it's too conscious. It isn't automatic enough. It's spontaneous enough. And then you're always tripped up by this satisfaction with the tendency to repeat words or something is over said. You have to autology, or it isn't precise enough, and you can't do enough to ensure the ease and naturalness in the same time the precision. I think prose is much harder to contrive. Well, I think that's all we'll have time for, Miss Moore. My warm thanks to you for your kindness in coming to the University for this broadcast and answering my question so fully and freely, if you did.

The book we have been referring to and reading from is a Mary Ann Moore reader, which was lately published by the Viking Press. I want to recommend it to our listeners because it is sure to lead the reader to the stirring experience of reading a poet whose precision and discipline of mind is a lesson to us in such a time as ours, and whose quiet wit and leaping fancy and imagination are both delightful and a deep wisdom. The reader will serve admirably as an introduction to her work, and then the susceptible ones will go on to read all of her books. Next Thursday, my guest will be Mr. Frederick Frank, whose African sketchbook illustrated with his own drawings will be the book we'll discuss. Until then, good reading to you.