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In his exploratory study of modern American poets, economist David Galenson limited his analysis to 11 outstanding innovators who averaged more than three poems per anthology. Of the 11, six were finders and five were seekers -- experimental poets tending to do their most important work later in their careers. That was the career pattern for all five: Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Each of the five was also known for detailed observations. In the case of Williams, Moore and Bishop, they focused sharply on the world around them. Lowell and Stevens put more emphasis on the relationship between their interior life and their observations. Like many seekers, most of the five struggled to finish poems or frequently revised previously completed works.
Marianne Moore, 1887-1972: ‘empress of observation’
Marianne Moore’s poems are based on her detailed observation of the world around her, stretching back to her studies of biology in college. Although she was an extensive, esoteric reader, inspired by many literary sources, her powers as an observer stand out.
That trait, typical of many experimental innovators, earned her the title “the empress of observation” from poet Josephine Jacobsen. Similarly, critics Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury called her poems “careful mosaics of fragments gleaned from a lifetime’s close observation,” and T.S. Eliot wrote that she “succeeds at once in startling us into an unusual awareness of visual patterns, with something like the fascination of a high-powered microscope.”
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Marianne Moore, middle-aged experimental observer of nature
In her late 40s, Moore wrote the frequently anthologized “The Jerboa” about an African jumping rat. This excerpt illustrates her blend of thoughts and observation.
The Jerboa
…
The translucent mistake
of the desert does not make
hardship for one who
can rest and then do
the opposite -- launching
as if on wings, from its match-thin hind legs, in
daytime or at night; with the tail as a weight,
undulated out by speed, straight.
…
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Like many experimental innovators, often she didn’t simply finish a poem and then leave it be. Instead, she revised old poems for republication.
Also like other seekers, she achieved greater success in her forties and fifties than in her twenties. Her peak decade was her thirties, which included the composition of her one poem in the top 20 – “Poetry” -- which she wrote at age 32.
Overall, she had a long, successful poetic career. Of all the Moore poems reprinted in anthologies, she wrote only 11 percent in her twenties. She wrote 49 percent in her thirties and continued strongly in her forties and fifties, with 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively.
Even in her later years, she remained productive. The tally of her anthologized poems includes one percent from her sixties and two percent from her seventies.
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