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Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.

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
Poetry
Primal
Poetic
Necessity

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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.
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Concurring hands divide flax for damask that when bleached by Irish weather has the silvered chamois-leather water-tightness of a skin.
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When one is frank, one's very presence is a compliment.
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The power of the visible is the invisible.
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I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time.
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As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.
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Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious.
Marianne Moore
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[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing, is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.
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that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.
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When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use.
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You are not male nor female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man.
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What is our innocence, What is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.
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Yule—Yul log for the Christmas-fire tale-spinner—of fairy tales that can come true: Yul Brynner.
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Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.
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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... 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.
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So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths.
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] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple it is a privilege to see so much confusion.
Marianne Moore
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One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensable to one's happiness to express.
Marianne Moore