Poetry like so many other things in life is complicated and easily misunderstood, similar to the poem entitled “Poetry” by Marianne Moore. Through her unique way of writing Moore uses literary devices imagery and personification to make the readers question why it is she has come to “dislike”(line 1) poetry. In particular, her word choice leaves a lot of room to wonder exactly why she has chosen to write it this way. A main theme that is represented in this poem is conformity and whether or not it is something to be followed.
There are many ways in which one can convey themselves. Marianne Moore uses her speaker's “dislike”(Line 1) of poetry to bring forth the idea that society has dictated how poetry must follow a certain strict and rigid formation. Poetry has always been written with a basic formula in mind. The poem should rhyme, it should have rhythm, there's a required need to have a certain number of symbols in each line. Moore strays from this (idea) by saying “I,too,dislike” (Line1). Commenting on how society has so much control over what we do. The idea of society not allowing for change is augmented (cemented) with “there are things that are beyond all this fiddle” (Line1) encouraging the writer (reader) to break way, to be different from what's being demanded.
This idea gets carried further by the comparison of what is important is compared with what is not, “things are important” (Line 6) and “there are things that are beyond all this fiddle” (Line 1).
She has also added an ironic turn to the phrase “I, too, dislike it” (Line 1) because of her dislike of poetry has not stopped her from continuing to complain about such a system in the form of something does not like.
The speaker is very forward and harsh in s...
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...no one is willing to break the mold per se. (Line 8) Everyone would rather stay with their own ideas of safety and uniformity.
This “place for the genuine” Moore refers to in both versions of her poem is considered the setting of her poem. It is only here that people who have succeed in telling the truth, and staying true to the craft of writing poetry can exist. The setting is a very specific “a place for the genuine” a place where people are judged on who they are rather than what they’ve done. This ideal setting also causes separation to occur between those who are genuine and those who are believed to not to be.
Works Cited
Moore, Marianne. “Poetry” 1921. Approaching Literature: Reading + Thinking + Writing. Ed. Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013. 843-844. Print.
The poem is written in the style of free verse. The poet chooses not to separate the poem into stanzas, but only by punctuation. There is no rhyme scheme or individual rhyme present in the poem. The poems structure creates a personal feel for the reader. The reader can personally experience what the narrator is feeling while she experiences stereotyping.
In her poem entitled “The Poet with His Face in His Hands,” Mary Oliver utilizes the voice of her work’s speaker to dismiss and belittle those poets who focus on their own misery in their writings. Although the poem models itself a scolding, Oliver wrote the work as a poem with the purpose of delivering an argument against the usage of depressing, personal subject matters for poetry. Oliver’s intention is to dissuade her fellow poets from promoting misery and personal mistakes in their works, and she accomplishes this task through her speaker’s diction and tone, the imagery, setting, and mood created within the content of the poem itself, and the incorporation of such persuasive structures as enjambment and juxtaposition to bolster the poem’s
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
Meinke, Peter. “Untitled” Poetry: An Introduction. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s 2010. 89. Print
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
Marianne Moore ranked with Emily Dickinson among America’s finest woman poets. Moore crafted her poems superbly. She generally used poetic forms in which the controlling element is the number and arrangement of syllables rather than c...
Moulton, Charles Wells. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966. Print.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Have you ever felt like you had to live up to an ideal that is just not in you to live up to? Have you been pressured to act a certain way because that’s what’s considered the norm? If you answered yes to these questions, fear not. Societal pressures and expectations have been around for centuries. People have been singing, writing, painting, and talking about these feelings of expectation for just as long. D.H. Lawrence’s “Snake,” and Langston Hughes’s “Theme in English B,” speak to the struggles of societies expectations. Though both poems are dissimilar in many ways, they share the common thread that the main characters are fighting what society deems to be the norm both internally and externally.
The late president John F. Kennedy once said, “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” Although many may find comfort by endorsing conformity, some may disagree and think otherwise. President JFK highlighted his point of view by describing conformity as the enemy of a liberal and advanced society. In order to shed a better light onto conformity, we ought to ask ourselves questions like, why do most of us submit to the power of conformity? How does conformity shape our personal lives and our society? And most importantly the consequences that may reflect on our lives if we decided to go against conformity. In her poem, Emily Dickinson, “Much Madness is Divinest Sense” attempted to send a powerful message about conformity.
In Chapter 8, Taylor defines and outlines the change from pre-modern to modern societies. Previously, our world was ordered independently of us. Individuals looked for their identities by means of their social standing or religion. However, “modern freedom and autonomy center us on ourselves, and the ideal of authenticity requires that we discover and articulate our own identity” (Taylor 81). This change goes back to the end of the 18th century and is evident in art and poetry. In modern society, our feelings are coming from within. Our human feelings are our nature, which is deeply personal. Yet, Taylor reminds his readers that in modern poetry there is an
The Bedford Introduction to Literature 4th ed. of the book. Boston: St. Louis St. Martin’s Press, 1996. 883-89.
In the 4th, 5th, and 6th line of this poem the poet portrays a major simile stating “the truth’s superb surprise, as lightening to the children eased with explanation kind.” In the first part of the simile saying “the truths superb
This, in fact, is an example of “dynamic decomposition” of which the speaker claims she understands nothing. The ironic contradiction of form and content underlines the contradiction between the women’s presentation of her outer self and that of her inner self. The poem concludes with the line “’Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.’” which is a statement made by the man. Hence, it “appears to give the last word to the men” but, in reality, it mirrors the poem’s opening lines and emphasises the role the woman assumes on the outside as well as her inner awareness and criticism. This echoes Loy’s proclamation in her “Feminist Manifesto” in which she states that women should “[l]eave off looking to men to find out what [they] are not [but] seek within [themselves] to find out what [they] are”. Therefore, the poem presents a “new woman” confined in the traditional social order but resisting it as she is aware and critical of