poetry

Marianna Moore “Poetry”

While reading this poem, at first it was difficult to completely understand what is happening or what is exactly is being told. I decided to break down sentence by sentence to make it easier and it helped bring out the poems true colors. “I too dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle”. After reading this segment it points out to me that our speaker shares that she too doesn’t like it referring to the reader that they must not like it too since majority of people do not. The question is why does she say it and not say poetry.
“Reading it, however with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers it after all, a place the genuine”. This tells me that the speaker explains that reading poetry with perfect understanding is hard and confusing, but its achievable to find a place inside your self that can appreciate it.
“Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important because a high sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful”. This specific passage explains to me that the speaker is telling the author that poetry can be so powerful and meaningful with the right keen hands to fully grasp it, and the right eyes that can see past it and find the meaning as well as the hairs on yourself that will tense up from the message of the poem and its way of creation. She also states its important cause with these abilities it is vital and important because they are useful not just for poetry but for other things.
“When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand”. This tells me that its true that for people sometimes when we don’t understand something, it becomes unimportant to us because we don’t have that drive or push to make us understand it since its to hard or to confusing. The author is saying that for us, many do not understand poetry making us give up on it since we don’t full grasp the true understanding of it.
“The bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feel a flea, the baseball fan, the statistician” . This creates imagery in the readers head by giving examples of what the author is trying to convey and creates images in ones head. Its relating to how these examples are hard to understand but make sense in a way once you dig deep enough and find the answer to it.
“Nor is it valid to discriminate against “business documents and school books”; This part shows me that even though we hate books and documents the purpose of it is to teach us something, so instead of hating it since its hard to understand, take time to see its purpose of making us only smarter.
“All these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be literalists of the imagination”. The structure of this creates the message to me that all phenomena in things are important but its hard to see at first, and it takes a close eye to see this distinction. By addressing that dragging half poets into prominence the result is not poetry, and neither till the poets among us can be literalists of the imagination pin points that all poets can create poetry but the good kinds are the ones with imagination and a voice to it. It doesn’t have to have this deeper meaning to it but has to be genuine to the poet and have something real to them.
“Above for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them shall we have it.” This creates images in the readers head and creates that sense of imagery by giving it direction on how anything can be imaginative but adding reality to it can be worthwhile and she be taken for accounted for.
“In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.” The ending to this poem stands out to me the most because this part says that even raw poetry can be good, and having that rawness as a good thing can make it genuine since anything can be poetry but it has to be genuine. The speaker address the reader by saying if you can appreciate rawness in all its power, then you can appreciate poetry in all its rawness.