Odd lines

If Marianne Moore’s poems seem odd to us even now, more than 80 years after the appearance of her first book, this is partly because they are literally — mathematically — odd. Far more than any English-language poet before her, she experimented with lines containing an odd number of syllables — 9, 7, 5 or, as in “The Fish,“ an unlikely 1 and 3:

All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice.

Brad Leithauser, NYT *) 4.1.04

THE POEMS OF MARIANNE MOORE
Edited by Grace Schulman.
449 pp. New York: Viking. $40.

In der NZZ besprach Jürgen Brôcan am 4.9.03 (L&P Archiv 09/2003):

Eva Hesse: Marianne Moore. Dichterin der amerikanischen Moderne. «Die Ehe» als ihr «Wüstes Land». Rimbaud-Verlag, Aachen 2002. 132 S., Fr. 27.-.

Marianne Moore: Becoming Marianne Moore. The Early Poems, 1907-1924. Ed. by Robin G. Schulze. University of California Press, Berkeley 2002. 504 S., $ 50.-.

Hier Gedichte und Informationen, darunter das Gedicht Poetry mit der Anfangszeile:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.