Marianne (Craig) Moore - Life, Poetic career, Edsel consulting, Later years

Poet, born in St Louis, Missouri, USA. She studied at Bryn Mawr College, PA, and taught at Carlisle Commercial College before becoming a branch librarian in New York City (1921–5). She contributed to The Egoist from 1915, and edited The Dial from 1926 until its demise in 1929. She was acquainted with such seminal Modernists as Pound and T S Eliot, and associated with the Greenwich Village group, Idiosyncratic. A consummate stylist, and unmistakably modern, her first publication was Poems (1921). Selected Poems appeared in 1935, and Complete Poems in 1967.

Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 - February 5, 1972) was a Modernist American poet and writer.

Life

Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of construction engineer and inventor, John Milton Moore, and his wife, Mary Warner. In 1905, Moore entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught courses at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 1915, when Moore began to professionally publish poetry.

Poetic career

In part because of her extensive European travels before the First World War, Moore came to the attention of poets as diverse as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., T. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal The Dial. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry, encouraging promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop and Allen Ginsberg, and publishing, as well as refining poetic technique, early work.

In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from Poetry. Moore became a minor celebrity, in New York literary circles, serving as unofficial hostess for the Mayor. Moore continued to publish poems in various journals, including The Nation, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism. Moore corresponded for a time with W.H.

Edsel consulting

In 1955, Moore was informally invited by Ford's David Wallace, Manager of Marketing Research for Ford's proposed "E" car project and co-worker Bob Young for input and suggestions. Wallace's rationale was "who better to understand the nature of words than a poet."

Moore, a loyal Ford owner, submitted numerous lists which included: "Silver Sword," "Thundercrest" (and "Thundercrester"), "Resilient Bullit," "Intelligent Whale," "Pastelogram," "Adante con Moto" "Varsity Stroke," and "Mongoose Civique." (One name she suggested, "Chaparral", later coincidentally was used for a racing car.) Against the strong objection of her brother, Moore also submitted the name TURCOTINGA, which was a play on the Cotinga (a South American finch) and the color turquoise; In a letter dated December 8th 1955, Moore wrote the following:

All these outside ideas were rejected, although Miss Moore received two dozen roses and a thank you note affectionately addressed to the Top Turtletop, which Moore found amusing. While Moore's contributions were meant to stir creative thought, and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature, history has greatly exaggerated her relationship to the project.

Later years

Not long after throwing the first pitch for the 1968 season in Yankee Stadium, Moore suffered a stroke.

Moore never married. Moore's living room has been preserved in its original layout in the collections of the Rosenbach Museum &

Her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry," in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Moore went even further than Jeffers, wholly denying meter. These syllabic lines from "Poetry" illustrate her contempt for meter, and other poetic tools:

In 1996 she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. without Moore's knowledge. The Marianne Moore Reader, 1961. Essays by Moore, Edmund Wilson, etc. The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, edited by Bonnie Costello, Celested Goodridge, Cristann Miller.