The Uniqueness of Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore is a rather interesting figure within the Modern movement. Author Elder Olsen believes that “the structure of her poems is intellectual, but it is not that of deductive argument. Rather it is an association of insights which culminate almost invariably in a final insight. The principal devices of her technique are ones which force us to those insights; which force us, that is, to see what she sees” (103). Rather than manipulating the emotions of the reader, Moore attempts to get the reader to think about what she has written. Therefore, it can be said that her unique approach to poetry separates her from her peers.

In her work, Poetry, Moore reveals to the reader that poetry does not necessarily have to poetic in the popular sense in order to be considered poetry. Rather, the poetry in question must elucidate the reader with what the poet is trying to express while striving not “to become so derivative as to become intelligible” – for “we do not admire what we cannot understand.” If the poet chooses to follow Moore’s format, the reader will successfully visualize the imagery evoked by the poem in their mind’s eye. Assuming the reader is intelligent enough to do so of course. Olsen admits that:

Marianne Moore is a difficult poet, but not an obscure one; on the contrary, she is extremely clear, and our difficulty comes from her insistence that we think and think well at every point in her poems. To miss once is almost certainly to miss again in what follows, and perhaps also to fail to see the full significance of what has gone before. This is no fault of hers, but of ours; she is purely the artist, concerned with saying what she has to say as quickly and effectively as possible. She does not enlarge, she does not digress, and she does not make obvious transitions; as a highly civilized person, she assumes the intelligence of her audience. She is, moreover, not concerned with saying something characteristically, but with saying it rightly; in consequence she is frequently satisfied with quotation, when the quotation hits the mark. She includes nothing unnecessary; she never pads to fill out a pattern. She is willing to leave a sentence unfinished when the reader can finish it for himself, to use a phrase only, when it says what a sentence might, or a word only, when it says what a phrase might. (104)

Thus, the reason that Moore fits in well with her Modern peers is because she transforms language into something new and exciting to read.

Marianne Moore deserves to be remembered as a distinguished poet among her peers of the Modern period. She wrote her poems in a manner that was distinctive and new, encouraging the reader to actively participate in conjuring the imagery she wrote about. Her intelligent use of language and descriptive imagery makes her work very unique, and it is limited only by the ability of the reader to comprehend and imagine it.

Elder, Olson. “The Poetry of Marianne Moore.” Chicago Review, 11.1. 1957. 100-104. JSTOR. Web. 29 Apr. 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25293319.

McKay and Toomer - Their Place in the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, began amidst a turbulent time of social and ideological change in American history – WWI had just been concluded, women’s suffrage had finally gained them the right to vote, and Modernism was reshaping the way people perceived art, literature, and philosophy. The world was changing, and African-Americans realized that this was the moment in which they needed to define themselves as a people. Author Gerald Early wrote that “the long-standing idea that the black possessed no sense of craft, that the idea of method was alien to his nature…” (141) best summarizes the perception of the black man prior to the Harlem Renaissance. However, Early continues, “[the black man] combated in two ways through the literature of the Harlem Renaissance: in poetry, where the idea of craft and method becomes both transparent conceit and the cultural politics of the mastery of intelligibility” (141). Thus, the Harlem Renaissance began.

Theoretically, the movement was supposed to be united in purpose, building up and redefining the African-American. In practice on the other hand, it was divided against itself over several issues pertaining to black identity and expression as it related to that of their white counterparts. Out of this division “two distinct black schools arose: the Countee Cullen antivernacular, mastery of traditional forms approach and the Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, James Weldon Johnson school of reconstructed dialect and the operating belief that black expression was inherently and undeniably craftsmanship and discipline” (Early 141). Black artists sought to reconcile where their work fit in the world at large – was it something uniquely black regardless of form, and if not, “could [they] avoid mimicking European forms and still have great art?” (Patton and Honey 134). This proved to be the crux of the ideological dilemma for many black authors, scholars, and artists. However, this did not prevent several poets from blending the two and forming their own unique style.

A poet and writer, Claude McKay was one of the more radical figures of the New Negro Movement, the style of his works oscillating between the two aforementioned ideologies and often merging them. His poem, A Midnight Woman to the Bobby, is a great example of McKay’s ability to “harness the vigor, wit, and resistant spunk of the Jamaican idiom to English forms” (Norton 499) and reflects his Jamaican roots. McKay sought to illustrate the black experience in America in his Home to Harlem, which garnered much acclaim for its depiction of black culture, and profoundly influenced black expression.

Jean Toomer, on the other hand, was of a mixed ethnic background, allowing him to “pass” and exist within white culture. This allowed him a unique perspective of being an African-American who was witness to racial tensions, yet he avoided being the target of said aggression. His experiences in Georgia are profoundly evident in his masterwork Cane. Many of the poems in this collection utilize “the stark juxtapositions of Imagism to embody violent racial tension” (Ramazani, Ellmann, and O’Claire 557) in the South. Toomer’s Portrait in Georgia exemplifies this comparing the description of a white woman to a lynching – “and her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame” (Toomer 560).

Early, Gerald. "Three Notes toward a Cultural Definition of the Harlem Renaissance." Callaloo. 14.1 1991. 136-149. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 218. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420090816&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w.

McKay, Claude. “If We Must Die.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and ContemporaryPoetry. Vol. 1. 3^rd ed. Eds. Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Claire. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 501-502.

Patton, Venetria K., and Maureen Honey. Revisioning The Harlem Renaissance. 130-143.

Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Claire, eds. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Vol. 1. 3^rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 498-557.

Their Eyes Are Watching God: A Comparison

Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, celebrated the life and independence of an African-American female named Janie. Following her death, her works fell into obscurity until they were rediscovered by renowned the African-American author, Alice Walker. Her love of Hurston’s work is well known, and in her book, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, she details her search for Hurston’s resting place, further illustrating her interest in Hurston’s life. As a tribute, in her novel, The Color Purple, Alice Walker’s character Celie is heavily influenced by Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal of Janie and this is evidenced by the many parallels can be drawn between their lives, the fact that local color plays a huge part in their portrayals, and that both of them discover how strong they really are and assert their independence.

Many parallels can be drawn between the protagonists of both of these stories. Janie is born as a very light-skinned child, the product of a rape that resulted in her being raised by her grandmother. Celie is born into a poor family and is has two children as the result of rape by her step-father. Janie is married off to a farmer by way of arranged marriage, as is Celie. Celie is physically and sexually abused by her spouse as well, which leads her to further detach herself from her humanity by “making herself wood” (Walker 22) Janie’s second husband, Jody, forces her to repress her nature out of jealousy, taking “all the fight out of her face” until the point that “she thought it was gone from her soul” (Hurston 76). These women suffer through their respective existences until they find love – in the forms of Shug Avery and Tea Cake. Even these are bittersweet as Shug gets married and Janie is forced to kill Tea Cake after he catches rabies. Yet, both of the novels end with the protagonist as an independent woman forged by the fires of their past experiences.

The local color of Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple, help create the feeling of the times in which they are set and help accentuate the characters. Both Celie and Janie affect a Southern dialect in their speech, although they do differ given the two different regions in which these stories take place. Hurston’s inclusion of African-American folklore in her novel was evidence of her particular fondness for the subject, yet they also served the purpose of providing a sense of depth for the characters, and provided the reader with the feeling that they had a history. Janie’s thoughts of “Death, …who lived way in the West” (Hurston 84) provide insight into the beliefs of the time period. Walker’s choice of turning of Harpo’s house into a speakeasy that hosted Jazz artists like Shug Avery, functioned as a method for building a sense of community near the isolated farm that Celie lives on. It is here, where Shug dedicates a song to Celie that she finally begins to feel the stirrings of self-worth.

The liberation of these two women in their respective novels is portrayed differently, yet it is completely necessary in order to achieve the growth in character that they (and the reader) have been waiting for. Janie shoots Tea Cake, which symbolically elevates her and frees her from the submissive position of being less than a man. Celie’s business success after leaving her husband also portrays her in this light. This actualization of self is only achieved through trials, and adheres to the Modernist tenet that something must be sacrificed in order to gain something else.

Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.

Walker, Alice. “In Search of Zora.” In Search of Our Mother’s Garden. Turtleback

Books, 2000. 93-116.

- - - . “The Color Purple.” United States: First Harvests, 2003.

The Not So Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald penned one of the most recognizable and influential American novels of the Modernist period. The Great Gatsby is characterized by its strict adherence to the Modern writing style and the novel’s conclusion leaves the reader with many questions regarding the actions of its eponymous character. Yet none of this could have been managed without the aid of the novel’s narrator, Nick. Although Gatsby’s character is ultimately the one the novel focuses upon, Nick’s assessment that “Gatsby turned out alright in the end” (Fitzgerald 2) is most assuredly a colored one. The reader cannot and does not know which facts Nick felt were important to his vision Gatsby and those that were omitted because they contradicted it.

Nick first spots Gatsby at a distance near the end of Chapter 1, after returning home from Tom and Daisy’s house. Nick remarks that Gatsby’s movements seemed leisurely as he had “come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens,” yet “he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms…in a curious way” (20). The reader is not immediately clued in to the significance of this moment, nor does Nick expound on the “single green light…that might have been the end of the dock” (21). Only through later revelations is the reader able to comprehend the import of all that Nick sees in those few fleeting moments.

Nick finally meets Gatsby in Chapter 3 at one of his extravagant house parties. Up until this point in the novel, Nick’s (and therefore the reader’s) only source of information about Gatsby is found via rumors from the party goers, many of which do not paint Gatsby in a positive light. When Gatsby finally introduces himself to Nick, his description of Gatsby to the reader reveals that even Nick seems somewhat leery of Gatsby, be it conscious or not. He describes Gatsby as “an elegant roughneck…whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd” and when he questions Jordan about it she replies that “he’s just a man named Gatsby” (48). Claire Stocks writes that:

Gatsby seems to exemplify a particular ideal for Nick, and it is certainly possible to read Gatsby as a kind of doppelganger who embodies all that Nick would like to be…It is possible, then, that Nick identifies with and admires Gatsby and wants to believe in the possibility of a man with little or no inheritance (like Gatsby and himself) becoming wealthy and successful in America. (9)

As the narrative continues Nick confronts more and more evidence that Gatsby is a less than savory individual, yet he refuses to acknowledge to the reader that Gatsby is not the paragon that Nick paints him to be. To the reader “it seems clear…that Nick is not interested in exposing the real Gatsby…As the story progresses, then, Nick's version seems increasingly unreliable as he glosses over lies, erases criticisms of Gatsby and avoids uncomfortable truths” (Stocks 9). This makes it somewhat challenging to the reader to determine the truth of Gatsby and his dealings – is he a man who profited due to errors in moral and ethical judgment, or is he as conniving and licentious as Tom accuses him of being?

Stocks, Claire. "'All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'." The English Review Feb. 2007: 9+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA158832066&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1935.

Imagining William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has a unique place in the pantheon of Modernist poets. It is interesting to note that Williams’ belief that poetry and the written word was shared by many of his peers at the time. Yet what sets Williams apart is his obsession to distill meaning in fewer words while building up and glorifying the mundane, everyday in his works. In this essay, we will be taking a look at The Young Housewife, This Is Just to Say, and his most popular work, The Red Wheelbarrow.

The Young Housewife presents the reader with the image of young woman who is being observed by the narrator. This poem describes an active housewife juxtaposed against the passive, watching narrator. As the housewife “moves about in negligee,” the narrator states that “I pass solitary in my car” and when “again she comes to the curb” and the narrator feels it necessary to “compare her to a fallen leaf.” In effect, the housewife is portrayed in a not so positive light as she stands outside “shy, uncorseted” while she attempts “to call the ice-man, the fish-man.” This moral judgment passed by the narrator seems unapologetic – matter-of-factly in its nature, yet the narrator does not seem to feel that his actions warrant judging as well. In the entirety of the ‘interchange’ between the voyeuristic narrator and the housewife, the narrator remains a passive force – avoiding actual contact with the housewife up until the last verse driving by her “as I bow and pass smiling.”

This Is Just to Say comes could be interpreted by reader as a note one might find on a refrigerator or table. In just a few words, Williams conjures up an entirely humorous scenario in which the narrator finds the unattended “plums that were in the icebox” and proceeds to eat them. The narrator then notes that the individual saving them was probably doing so for breakfast, and despite his apology, he then proceeds to describe how “delicious so sweet and so cold” they were – essentially mocking the reader of the note.

The Red Wheelbarrow appears to be very simplistic at first, almost overly so. Yet upon closer examination, the reader has an entire farm scene built around the wheelbarrow. What stands out about this poem in particular is its stark use of color – “a red wheelbarrow” and “the white chickens.” The scene seems sparse in comparison to some of his other works, yet it requires that the reader actively participate in the creation of the scene. A great deal is left for the reader to picture for themselves, but Williams manages just create the framework upon which the reader may build upon in order to create the entire picture.

If the purpose of poetry is to evoke feeling and imagery in the reader, William Carlos Williams is a master of his craft. All of his poems conjure up images for the reader to see, yet some of them require that the reader actively pursue the complete image that Williams only hints at.