Reading this article took me a long time. I still remember looking at this article on Thursday afternoon, scared by its formidable length. After much time and effort reading the article the night before, I wake up to find out that reading this article had become optional. But nevertheless, this article has brought me some insight on Moore’s writing and thoughts.
Through reading this article and many of Moore’s poems, I learned that Moore really likes to write about animals and sometimes parallel/compare their behavior to humans, like in “The Jerboa”. In the poem, she first describes how humans like to use objects to display their power and material happiness then contradicts it to the jerboa, whose lack of material is its source of happiness. The article also talks about Moore’s poem “He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron’”. In this poem, the ostriches exemplify great courage as they protect their chicks from danger, but the humans kill these ostriches, not because of human’s heroism but because of their greed. Using these examples, the article argues Moore’s tendency to take two drastically different things and put them together to show connections that we otherwise would not notice. I especially like how the author argues that Moore aims “to accomplish more than merely the appreciation that art museums seek: they also teach a lesson, as science museums aim to. She asks her readers both to marvel at the objections she lays before them and to learn lessons from them”.
After learning this, I “The Octopus” seemed a little clearer to me. If Moore likes to take two things and show their connection, then there must be some connection between the octopus and the Greeks that she mentions in the poem. I thought the octopus is actually referring to the snow near the top of a volcanic mountain. The descriptions of the rat, the “thoughtful beavers” are all animals that live on this mountaintop. The volcano is “composed of calcium gems”, “alabaster pillars”, “topaz, tourmaline crystals, and amethyst quartz” and that it’s “‘a mountain with those graceful lines which prove it a volcano,’/ its top a complete cone like Fujiyama’s”. The animals live happily and blissfully on this volcano, unaware of the dangers it can bring but the Greeks are not so happy because they are aware of danger. This led me to conclude that Moore might be arguing that innocence/ignorance is bliss. In the second stanza, she talks about a “power as Adam had and we are still devoid of”, which may be referring to innocence/ignorance. She also talks about how “guns, nets, seines, traps and explosives…are prohibited” and how “disobedient persons being summarily removed/ and not allowed to return without permission in writing”. This refers to the laws we set up to protect ourselves because we know of selfishness and fail to trust others.
Overall, by reading the article, I found a general way to read Moore’s poems, to take her animals and connect them to whatever comes after.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I too read the article, and found it to be most helpful in aiding a reader towards understanding Marianne Moore’s methods of writing poetry. Had I not read the article, I wouldn’t have seen the connection between all the animals mentioned throughout all her poems and the ideas that Moore is trying to convey. I read in your post that Moore did indeed spend time in science focused museums from which she found her inspirations. I also remember reading about that. Moore sought to have magnificent execution and to teach as that happens, just as science museums do with their grand exhibitions.
I noticed that you also made your own connection after reading “An Octopus” with the help of the article. You brought up innocence and ignorance. After reading your post, I could see how that ties the images of animals in with the descriptions about the Romans. I thought the poem was extremely random at first, but after discussions and several blog posts, I’m starting to see that “An Octopus” was not just a mess of quotations.
Post a Comment