Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Moore, Marianne (Vol. 19) - Hugh Kenner

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HUGH KENNER

One might sort Miss Moore's poems into those that observe, meditate, and enact in this way, the rigorous pattern a dimension of meditation and enactment; those that soliloquize, like "A Grave" or "New York," and have as their center of gravity therefore the speaker's probity and occasional tartness; and those (rather frequent of late) that incite, that set themselves to exact, appropriate feelings about something public. For her public occasions Miss Moore seems a little dependent on the newspapers; "Carnegie Hall: Rescued" has her inimitable texture, but the sentiment of the poem is extrinsic to that texture. The sentiment is that of The New York Times and The New Yorker, public relief, public gratitude; yes, public platitude. One need not quarrel with the sentiments to find the poems dedicated to them unlucky. The poems simply participate, with busy flutter and stir of unexpected particulars, in what right-thinking people would,...

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1. Introduction
2. Ezra Pound
3. Harriet Monroe
4. T. S. Eliot
5. John Crowe Ransom
6. Lloyd Frankenberg
7. Louise Bogan
8. Randall Jarrell
9. Hugh Kenner
10. Brad Leithauser
11. Helen Vendler
12. Hilton Kramer
13. Copyright