High sounding interpretations

I thought Marianne Moore’s message in “Poetry” extended a tad beyond what it takes to write good poetry. “Poetry”, to me, was more of a hybrid between an expository essay and a poem; an expository essay in theme and a poem in structure and style. Although the focus of her poem was to explain what true poetry is, I think some of her arguments should be rules of thumb to the essay writer as well.
In the transition from the first stanza to the second, Moore explains that things that we wouldn’t think twice about are important “not because we can put upon them high-sounding interpretations but because they are useful. When (these things) become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing can be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand…”
The object of essay writing, at least to the novice writer, is to make things sounds nice and flowy. The true object of arguing your points clearly and concisely disappear behind the façade of fancy vocabulary. These unnecessary words are the “high sounding interpretations” Moore mentions. As a matter of fact, this obsession with making things sound good not only cloud the meaning of the work, but also tends to make the author sound a little arrogant, two things you don’t want your audience thinking about you.
I’ve struggled with essays in which my best friend was not common sense, but an online thesaurus. These essay were never my best work. Instead, what has helped me write was to think, as I write, “what does the audience want to know? What do they want to hear?” Constantly reminding yourself of what your goal isn’t as sad as it may seem; on the contrary, it serves the author in writing what is asked of them and more importantly, it doesn’t side track them to thesaurus.com. It gives them a chance to express what they want to without any aide.
Moore gives some very valuable advice in her poem on what good writing really is: the truth in plain, concise language. Ignoring the tendency to make things sound perfect is something I believe is very valuable to every writer.