Marianne Moore Silence
“Silence” by Marianne Moore, written in 2003, I feel represents the Literary Modernism movement which was based in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the poem, Moore talks about what her father used to say to her as a child.
The first line reads, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at Harvard.” I feel like she's saying that some superior people are not modest but they can be. Moore wrote this poem with the “freedom” characteristic, meaning, that she was not piled up with feelings of anything meaningful. She was in her happy place. When I think of the title of the poem (Silence) the first thing that comes to mind is the saying “ silence is golden”. While Moore was writing …show more content…
They told them not to say certain things even though there was an amendment for freedom of speech. Another line in the poem states “Self reliant like the cat, that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse’s limp tail hanging, like a shoelace from its mouth.” I feel that this means the cat does not want to be watched or seen. Why does he seem to hide? The cat relies on itself to kill the mouse. They are both quite creatures by nature, enjoying solitude. The mouse’s solitude was taken away when the cat delightfully “robbed him of his speech”, because “It's deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.” The “Self conscious break” of the modernism movement represents the father in the poem, in which he would need to not be so traditional in his statement about “superior people.” The literary modernism movement shows that if he had gone to “Longfellow's grave” or if he had seen “The glass flowers at Harvard” he would have realized that maybe he was not so “superior” after all. Therefore, he would have been more open to a longer visit. In conclusion, your “deepest feeling” is always “silent”, because nobody else knows about it but you. Holding in that “deepest feeling” gives you solitude. If the thought is verbalized, you become “robbed” of that feeling you once had, which shows the breaking of “ones own traditional ways” which is described by Literary Modernism
The first line reads, “Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow’s grave nor the glass flowers at Harvard.” I feel like she's saying that some superior people are not modest but they can be. Moore wrote this poem with the “freedom” characteristic, meaning, that she was not piled up with feelings of anything meaningful. She was in her happy place. When I think of the title of the poem (Silence) the first thing that comes to mind is the saying “ silence is golden”. While Moore was writing …show more content…
They told them not to say certain things even though there was an amendment for freedom of speech. Another line in the poem states “Self reliant like the cat, that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse’s limp tail hanging, like a shoelace from its mouth.” I feel that this means the cat does not want to be watched or seen. Why does he seem to hide? The cat relies on itself to kill the mouse. They are both quite creatures by nature, enjoying solitude. The mouse’s solitude was taken away when the cat delightfully “robbed him of his speech”, because “It's deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.” The “Self conscious break” of the modernism movement represents the father in the poem, in which he would need to not be so traditional in his statement about “superior people.” The literary modernism movement shows that if he had gone to “Longfellow's grave” or if he had seen “The glass flowers at Harvard” he would have realized that maybe he was not so “superior” after all. Therefore, he would have been more open to a longer visit. In conclusion, your “deepest feeling” is always “silent”, because nobody else knows about it but you. Holding in that “deepest feeling” gives you solitude. If the thought is verbalized, you become “robbed” of that feeling you once had, which shows the breaking of “ones own traditional ways” which is described by Literary Modernism