Unlike Wallace Stevens who is known to have quoted lines of Chinese poetry in his writing … Marianne Moore never makes direct references to or gives quotations of classical Chinese poetry in her work…. But, while she is reticent about Chinese poetry, she alludes to Chinese objets d'art in many of her poems…. Miss Moore likens precision in writing to the skill of Chinese lacquer carving in her "Bowls."… With a "Chinese / 'passion for the particular,'" she talks about "Chinese carved glass," "landscape gardening twisted into permanence," and "the Chinese vermilion of / the poincianas" in "People's Surroundings."… [And] who but Miss Moore has the flashing wit and that "leap of the imagination" to confuse Mozart's "magic flute and harp" "with China's precious wentletrap" [as she does in "Logic and 'The Magic Flute'"]?… Here, in her own whimsical manner, Miss Moore contrasts the "precious wentletrap" of "The Magic Flute" with the "small audience-room" of Logic. In other words, she demonstrates that "The Magic Flute," the music that is as intricate as the "precious wentletrap" of life, cannot be confined in "the abalonean gloom" of our logical or rational mind. For life, like the water image … in Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching, overflows the boundary of words; it cannot be made to wear the straight-jacket of Logic. Here, Miss Moore's attitude reminds us of the anti-rationalism of the Zen masters…. A. Kingsley Weatherhead calls attention to the "wealth of contents" in her poetry and likens her unraveling of details to "what Ezra Pound called a 'periplum'."… [He] goes on to elaborate his theory by saying that, in Miss Moore's case, overcareful subordination of details to the whole "would defeat the poet's aim" because in some of her poems "discoveries are made by means of the fanciful relationships that are established."… [In] the act of composing her poetry, Miss Moore must have constantly astonished (and delighted) herself. (pp. 470-73)

Miss Moore's periplum technique, or her ability to make far-fetched associations, as demonstrated in her "Smooth Gnarled Crape Myrtle," is not unknown to the classical Chinese poets. And she herself is not unaware of the achievements of these poets when she mentions in her poem, "In Lieu of the Lyre," "the rime-prose revived by word-wizard Achilles—/Dr. Fang." The "rime-prose"—better known to the Chinese as the fu—is a subgenre of Chinese literature…. Although Miss Moore's poems are never as extended and as full of particulars as [a virtuoso piece of rime prose such as] Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju's "Shang-lin Park," she is just as capable—if not more capable than the Chinese poet—of far-fetched associations. For instance, in her poem "Blue Bug," whose protagonist is a pony owned by "Dr. Raworth Williams,"… she associates this "limber Bug" with a dancer, a dragonfly, "an ancient Chinese / melody," a "Yellow River- / scroll," the dubious etymology of "polo" as either "pelo" or "polos," a French painter, and a Chinese acrobat…. In this fantastic tour de force, Miss Moore's verbal agility (or kinema) is no less astounding than Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju's in his "Shang-lin Park," where flourish the dragons and the kylins (or Chinese unicorns), which equally delight Miss Moore in her own poems, "The Plumet Basilisk," "O To Be a Dragon," and "Nine Nectarines." (pp. 473-75)

The qualities of flexibility and versatility, the very qualities that Miss Moore has sought in the title poem, "O To Be a Dragon," are attained, like the "everchanging" dragon, in [that] volume. (p. 479)

Miss Moore has, through her assimilation of the Vital Spirit of the mythical Chinese beasts, managed to soar like the dragon and glide like the kylin from poem to poem. And as the dragon ranges from the sky to the seas and as the kylin sails the earth, they complement each other and dominate the universe. In inhaling the ch'i (breath or vital spirit) of the dragon and the kylin, Miss Moore has miraculously transported the essence of Cathay, or classical China, to the soil of American poetry. (p. 482)