National Poetry Month Recommendation: Marianne Moore

Here's something you can't say of many Modernist poets: in 1968, Marianne Moore threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. (Take that, Skipwith Cannell!) I understand it was a big, sweeping curve that just nicked the outside of the plate, and that Mel Stottlemyre asked her for some pointers later that evening.

She also suggested the names Intelligent Whale and Utopian Turtletop to Ford Motor Company. They went with Edsel.

(Both of those stories sound like elaborate hoaxes. I sort of wish they were, and I'd thought of them.)

A fine article on Moore is here.

Here's a poem called "To A Giraffe":

If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal
to be personal and desirable

to be literal—detrimental as well
if the eye is not innocent—does it mean that

one can live only on top leaves that are small
reachable only by a beast that is tall?—

of which the giraffe is the best example—
the unconversational* animal.

When plagued by the psychological,
a creature can be unbearable

that could have been irresistible;
or to be exact, exceptional

since less conversational*
than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal.

     After all
   consolations of the metaphysical
   can be profound. In Homer, existence

   is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
   "the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual."

(Pardon the font change. It was the only way I could get the line breaks and spaces right.)

And this is "A Jelly-Fish":

Visible, invisible,
  a fluctuating charm
an amber-tinctured amethyst
  inhabits it, your arm
approaches and it opens
  and it closes; you had meant
to catch it and it quivers;
  you abandon your intent.

I'll let Moore's work speak for itself. Honestly, I don't know what I could say that would be worthy.

* My thanks to the eagle-eyed and (I assume) Marianne Moore fancying J.C.P, who caught my mistaken transcription. I had had "unconventional" and "conventional" in place of "unconversational" and "conversational".