Marianne Moore

Image Credit: University of Illinois Modern American Poetry Site

Marianne Moore
1887-1972

Known as a highly important modernist poet and figure, Moore did not identify with the designation “poet” and experimented widely with style in her writings.

Major works

• Poems (1921)
• The Pangolin and Other Verse (1936)
• What Are Years? (1941)
• Nevertheless (1944)

*note: many of Moore’s works are available in book form only in our special collections library, which provides building use only. It is helpful to consult The Poetry Foundation website if you are looking to access particular poems online, and not entire books that she published.

Known associates

• H.D.
• T.S. Eliot
• Ezra Pound
• Alfred Stieglitz
• Wallace Stevens
• William Carlos Williams

Further reading

• Marianne Moore (Harold Bloom, editor; Chelsea House, 1987).
  • Contains literary criticism of her works and a chronology of her life.
• Marianne Moore: Woman and Poet (Patricia C. Willis, National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, 1990).
  • Contains essays about her life and work.

Primary sources

• Moore’s notebooks, the bulk of her correspondence, her manuscripts, and her library are at the Museum of the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia, where her Manhattan living room is also recreated.

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Sound recording of Moore reading some of her poems and translations of La Fontaine.