Quote

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.

Marianne Moore

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Marianne Moore
Age: 84 †
Born: 1887
Born: November 15
Died: 1972
Died: February 5
Essayist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Kirkwood
Missouri
Marianne Moore
Marianne Craig Moore
Sentences
Governed
Fabric
Gravity
Sentence
Maintain
Poem
Pull
Excitement

More quotes by Marianne Moore

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Writing is an undertaking for the modest.
Marianne Moore
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The heart that gives, gathers.
Marianne Moore
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They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.
Marianne Moore
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Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.
Marianne Moore
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Poetry ... ... a place for the genuine, Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise
Marianne Moore
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the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell buoys, advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink-- in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
Marianne Moore
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Victory won't come to me unless I go to it a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till knotted thirty times
Marianne Moore
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Excess is the common substitute for energy.
Marianne Moore
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repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
Marianne Moore
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The power of the visible is the invisible.
Marianne Moore
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I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
Marianne Moore
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Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.
Marianne Moore
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Which of us has not been stunned by the beauty of an animal's skin or its flexibility in motion?
Marianne Moore
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The hands are the heart's messengers.
Marianne Moore
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Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.
Marianne Moore
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Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people.
Marianne Moore
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Below the incandescent stars / below the incandescent fruit, / the strange experience of beauty / its existence is too much / it tears one to pieces / and each fresh wave of consciousness / is poison.
Marianne Moore
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A man is a writer if all his words are strung in definite sentence sounds.
Marianne Moore
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Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness.
Marianne Moore
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The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.
Marianne Moore