Modernism in Two poems by Marianne Moore

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21 February 2008

Modernism in Two Poems by Marianne Moore

Introduction "The most serious poetry today is still modernist . Modernism in literature is not easily

summarized , but the key elements are experimentation , anti-realism individualism , and a stress on the cerebral rather than emotive aspects (Wills 24 . To some extent , Marianne Moore 's poems The Fish and A Grave really follow the discussed modernist principles , but it is difficult to agree that Moore completely denies emotiveness and replaces it with modernist cerebral attributes

. As a result , it is possible to assume that The Fish and A Grave are the two examples of non-traditional modernist writing , in which experimentation , realism , and individualism are combined with unusual writing techniques , complicated poem structure , and extreme emotiveness

To start with , The Fish and A Grave display vivid similarities in the tone of writing , and the use of similar images "The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave " in The Fish are evidently similar and are almost parallel to "the blades of the oars / moving together like the feet of water-spiders " in A Grave : the unpleasant and almost tragic character of water in both poems is critical to understanding the modernist implications of both poetic works . However , in to completely realize the scope and meaning of Moore 's modernist verses , we should analyze each poem separately "Repeated / evidence has proved that it can live / on what cannot revive / its youth . The sea grows old in it (Moore 32 . This is where we face the complicatedness and incomprehension of modernist poetry What did Moore want to say with this passage ? Is it that she imagined nature in its full purposefulness which was not characteristic of traditional classical poetry ? It is more probable that a thirty-year-old poet was striving to express her sympathies with the nature , which she persistently viewed as deeply abused . The of nature 's violence , its wholeness , the sea as the source of physical injury and actually a threat to a human life - these are the signs of modernism in Moore 's writing . Having depicted nature as the threat of violence , Moore risked causing misinterpretation of the literary and sensual implications in The Fish . For many of those who have read The Fish violence in poetry may initially seem inappropriate and confusing . Yet this is not a reader 's mistake : Moore was really trying to show the nature in its power which bed on violence against human beings "The water drives a wedge / of iron through the iron edge / of the cliff , and the "external marks of abuse (Moore 32 ) is the combination of nature 's violence and the violence against nature it is the combination of the two incompatible elements , which is the distinguishing feature of poetic modernism

The modernism of The Fish is in that Moore was actually trying to combine the incompatible images , allusions , implications , and ideas . The initially incompatible conjunction of accidental and purposeful is another distinguishing feature of modernism in...