Analyzing Marianne Moore's 'Roses Only'

Rachel Hamilton
Ms. Lynn
5th Block
18 December 2012
Poetry Analysis Essay Marianne Moore was born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 15, 1887 and passed in New York City in 1972. Her grandfather raised her, and after his death, she and her family members stayed with many other relatives. She began teaching in New York at Carlisle Indian School in 1915. In 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library where she began to meet many other famous poets. Moore’s poem started becoming published in 1915, in the Egoist, an English magazine. She was highly recognized for all of her work and received many honors, such as the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In her free verse poem “Roses Only,” she
uses words such as “beauty,” “spirit,” and “ambitious” to create a flattering/complimentary tone in her work. The imagery used in the poem makes the reader picture a rose with thorns. Moore uses an interesting style in her piece; she separates the lines according to what she wanted to be emphasized and uses an extended metaphor to help the reader understand what she means. She wrote this poem to say that the true beauty of a person comes from within. The poem “Roses Only” has a flattering or reassuring tone.
Words like “beauty,” “spirit,” “superiority,” and “self-dependent”, in the first eight lines, all show a tone of confidence. The words “ambitious” and “pre-eminence” set the flattering or reassuring tone. There is three changes in tone in the poem, from showing confidence, to a flattery type tone, and then to a reassuring tone. The first change in tone, from the confidential tone, is represented after, “…self-dependent, anything an ambitious civilization might produce…”. The shift from flattery to reassuring comes after, “You cannot make us think you a delightful happen-so.”, from there it continues the reassuring
tone. The imagery used in this poem may make the reader picture a rose with beautiful petals and huge, sharp thorns, or someone beautiful without a good personality. Marianne, in this poem, compares beauty to a rose. She creates an image in the first few lines, “…beauty is a liability rather than an asset- that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing that you must have brains.”, of a person with a beautiful face, but with no brain. The next lines, “…conscious of surpassing by a dint of native superiority and liking for everything self-dependent, anything an ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to attempt through sheer reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from observation, is idle,” suggest, the same beautiful person being completely unnoticed by passing people. In the last five or six lines, Moore creates an image of a rose, with big thorns covering it, protecting it, with the words “Guarding the infinitesimal pieces of your mind…”. Then another rose, without the thorns by saying, “Would you not, minus thorns…”. In “Roses Only,” true beauty is being compared to a rose.
The metaphor, “…beauty is a liability rather than an asset…” basically says that being beautiful on the outside can only weigh one down if that is the only trait that is present. “…conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority…to confuse presumptions resulting from observation, is idle,” these few lines say that, one does not need to have an attractive face to be noticed. As Marianne begins to compare true beauty to a rose, she starts to talk about what anyone would be without the imperfections. “But rose, if, you are brilliant, it is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence,” says that no one is brilliant because of outside appearances. “Would you not, minus thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere perculiarity,” means without imperfections, perfection is more of an outcast. A rose without thorns is just a flower, and a human without imperfections is hardly human. Imperfections make people up, “what is brilliance without co-ordination,” says “what are petals without thorns,” which means, what are you without imperfections and only beauty? Imperfections are better to be left alone than altered, people will remember the little things that are not noticeable not how beautiful you are. “Guarding the infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too violently, your thorns are the best part of you,” means the same
thing. The theme “true beauty lies within” came from different word choices that created the tone of confidence and reassuring. The image of the rose and the meaning of different forms of figurative language helped shape the theme as well. The tone of reassurance was formed from the phrase, “the thorns are the best part of you,” letting the reader imply that, the imperfections are the best part of everyone. The big image of the poem was a rose with many thorns but beautiful petals, which in this case is representing true beauty. The figurative language helps the reader a lot with understanding the theme of the story, and creating the image in their mind. Marianne Moore did a fantastic job in using the elements of tone, word choice, imagery, and style to communicate the theme of the poem “Roses Only.”

Works Cited
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/96