Marianne Moore Short Poems
Famous Short Marianne Moore Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Marianne Moore. A collection of the all-time best Marianne Moore short poems
by
Marianne Moore
If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.
He said - and I think I repeat his exact words -
"Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness.
" Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form.
by
Marianne Moore
not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space --
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.
by
Marianne Moore
"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles.
" No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chinz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea-urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers--at ease and tall.
The king is dead.
by
Jack Spicer
If the diamond ring turns brass
Mama's going to buy you a looking glass
Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams
going on a picnic together when they were all students at the
University of Pennsylvania
Now they are all over seventy and the absent baby
Is a mirror sheltering their image.