Marianne Moore

Picking and Choosing

Literature is a phase of life. If
     one is afraid of it, the situation is irremediable; if
one approaches it familiarly
     what one say of it is worthless. Words are constructive
when they are true; the opaque allusion–the simulated flight

upward–accomplishes nothing. Why cloud the fact
    that Shaw is self-conscious in the field of sentiment but is otherwise re-
warding; that James is all that has been
    said of him if feeling is profound? It is not Hardy
the distinguished novelist and Hardy the poet, but one man

"interpreting life through the medium of the
    emotions." If he must give an opinion, it is permissible that the
critic should know what he likes. Gordon
    Craig with "this is I" and "this is mine," with his three
wise men, his "sad French greens" and his Chinese cherry- Gordon Craig, so

inclinational and unashamed–has carried
   the precept of being a good critic to the last extreme, and Burke is a
psychologist–of acute, raccoon-
   like curiosity. Summa diligentia;
to the humbling, whose name is so amusing–very young and very

rushed, Caesar crossed the Alps "on the top of a
   diligence." We are not daft about the meaning, but this familiarity
with wrong meanings puzzles one. Humming-
   bug, the candles are not wired for electricity.
Small dog, going over the lawn, nipping the linen and saying

that you have a badger–remember Xenophon;
   only the most rudimentary sort of behavior is necessary
to put us on the scent; "a right good
   salvo of barks," a few "strong wrinkles" puckering the
skin between the ears, are all we ask.


A Grave

Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to it
                                                                                                      yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The films stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look–
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them
for their bones have no lasted:
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away–the blades of the oars
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such thing
                                                                                                         as death.
The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx–beautiful under
                                                                                  networks of foam,
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed;
the birds swim through the air top speed, emitting cat-calls as heretofore–
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion beneath them;
and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell-buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped
                                                                           things are about to sink–
in which if they turn and twist, it i neither with volition nor consciousness.