Marianne Moore Quotes

BY DISPOSITION OF ANGELS
Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it.
Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit?
Something heard most clearly when not near it?
Above particularities,
these unparticularities praise cannot violate.
One has seen, in such steadiness never deflected,
how by darkness a star is perfected.
Star that does not ask me if I see it?
Fir that would not wish me to uproot it?
Speech that does not ask me if I hear it?
Mysteries expound mysteries.
Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate,
no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her,
too like him, and a-quiver forever.

One may be pardoned, yes I know one may, for love for love, undying (Ephesians 6:24)

TO VICTOR HUGO OF MY CROW PLUTO
“Even when the bird is walking we know that it has wings.” — VICTOR HUGO
Of:
my crow
Pluto,
the true
Plato,
azzurronegro
green-blue rainbow — Victor Hugo, it is true
we know that the crow
“has wings,” however pigeon-toe-
inturned on grass.
We do. (adagio)
Vivorosso
“corvo,”
although
con dizionario
io parlo
Italiano — this pseudo
Esperanto
which, savio
ucello
you speak too — my vow and motto
(botto e totto)
io giuro
è questo
credo:
lucro
è peso morto.
And so
dear crow — gioièllo
mio — I have to
let you go;
a bel bosco
generoso,
tuttuto vagabondo, s
erafino uvaceo
Sunto,
oltremarino
verecondo
Plato, addio.

(((((Impromptu equivalents for esperanto madinusa (made in U.S.A.) for those who might not resent them. azzurro-negro: blue-black vivorosso: lively con dizionario: with dictionary savio ucello: knowing bird botto e totto: vow and motto io giuro: I swear è questo credo: is this credo lucro è peso morto: profit is a dead weight gioièllo mio: my jewel a bel bosco: to lovely woods tuttuto vagabondo: complete gypsy serafino uvaceo: grape-black seraph sunto: in short verecondo: modest))))

Do the poet and scientist not work analogously? Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one ...of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision. As George Grosz says, “In art there is no place for gossip and but a small place for the satirist.” The objective is fertile procedure. Is it not? Jacob Bronowski says in The Saturday Evening Post that science is not a mere collection of discoveries, but that science is the process of discovering. In any case it’s not established once and for all; it’s evolving.

A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.

Tell me, Tell me where might there be a refuge for me
from egocentricity
and its propensity to bisect, mis-state, misunderstand
and obliterate continuity?

Staff and effigy of the animal which by shedding its skin is a sign of renewal — the symbol of medicine.

Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron,
iron is iron till it is rust.
There never was a war that was
not inward; I must
fight till I have conquered in myself what
causes war, but I would not believe it.
I inwardly did nothing.
O Iscariot-like crime!
Beauty is everlasting
and dust is for a time.

'Hebrew poetry is, prose with a sort of heightened consciousness' Ecstasy affords the occasion expediency, determines the form

One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.

I have been influenced by the Bible, Bach's music and contemporarily by Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams and Hopkins.

Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.

...in which letters are written / not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand / but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!

The problems is mastered — insupportably tiring when it was impending. Deliverance accounts for what sounds like axiom. <p> The Gordian knot need not be cut.

Yes, I believe in prayer, as a mystery which can endow one with more power perhaps than any other spiritual mystery, yet a mystery that cannot be exposited to a point where it is not a mystery.