Marianne Moore

“In America”, began the lecturer, “everyone must have a degree. The French do not think that all can have it, they don’t…

IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND really, it is not the business of the gods to bake clay…

Whatever it is, it’s a passion – a benign dementia that should be engulfing America, fed in a way the opposite of…

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for…

Art is exact perception: If the outcome is deception Then I think the fault must lie Partly with the critic’s eye, And…

is an enchanted thing     like the glaze on a katydid-wing         subdivided by sun         till the nettings are legion. Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti;…

My father used to say, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at…

That silence is best: that action and re- Action are equal: that control, discipline, and Liberation are bywords when spoken by an…

“Attack is more piquant than concord,” but when     You tell me frankly that you would like to feel       My flesh beneath your…

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than     an asset – that in view of the fact…

I like the mule: his sides are thin. He takes his ease in no man’s inn. When contrarieties are thick About his…

has not altered;—     a place as kind as it is green,     the greenest place I’ve never seen. Every name is a tune….

who likely were reluctant to be brave. Sitting by a slow fire on a waste of snow, I would last about an…