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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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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
Work
Category
Categories
Calling
Except
Poetry
Reason
Writing

More quotes by Marianne Moore

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Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
Marianne Moore
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When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
Marianne Moore
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Writing is an undertaking for the modest.
Marianne Moore
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We are what we were at birth, and each trait has remained in conformity with earth's and with heaven's logic: Be the devil's tool, resort to black magic, None can diverge from the ends which Heaven foreordained.
Marianne Moore
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Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
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... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ... ... if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, then you are interested in poetry.
Marianne Moore
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
Marianne Moore
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Excess is the common substitute for energy.
Marianne Moore
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If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try.
Marianne Moore
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The weak overcomes its/ menace, the strong over-/comes itself.
Marianne Moore
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Honesty - however dangerous - should be as valuable as radium it seems to me.
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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There is no pleasure subtler than the sensation of being a good workman and in work there is the sense of consanguinity-unconscious as a rule but sometimes conscious.
Marianne Moore
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Conscious writing can be the death of poetry.
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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Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps adjusting the ash heaps opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
Marianne Moore
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It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing.
Marianne Moore
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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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There never was a war that was not inward.
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