재밌네! "A Marianne Moore Reader"

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"A Marianne Moore Reader" (1961)

 

 

"Moore’s work is frequently grouped with poets such as H.D., T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and, later, Elizabeth Bishop, to whom she was a friend and mentor."

 --- 'Marianne Moore,' Poetry Foundation에서.

 

 

연말 Steam Espresso Bar에서도 그리고 새해 첫날 아침 Monk & Mongoose 커피숍에서도 이 책 A Marianne Moore Reader를 읽으며 속으로, 재밌네!, 혼잣말했던 기억이 난다. 책의 앞부분은 시, 반이 넘는 뒷부분은 에세이들과 한 편의 인터뷰 기록인데, 우선 뒷부분을 다 읽었다. Marianne Moore (1887-1972)가 T. S. Eliot보다 10개월 먼저 출생한 시인이어서, 그녀와 같은 세대 시인들에 대한 언급이며, 내용도 흥미로운 데다 뜻밖에 눈에 띄어 얻은 귀한 책을 읽는다는 게 또 즐거웠다. (지난해 9월 말에 이 책과 시인 Denise Levertov (1923-1997)의 New and Selected Essays를 The Book Stack -- 덴버대 도서관을 돕기 위해, 기증받은 책들을 파는 서점 -- 에서 발견했다. 두 책 다 거기 서가에 꽂힌지 두 달이 안 됐을 때다.)

 

아래는 본문에서

 

Originality is in any case a by-product of sincerity. (p. 124)

 

I myself, however, would rather be told too little than too much.... And I suppose one should not  be consciously obscure at all. In any case, a poem is a concentrate and has, as W. H. Auden says, "an immediate meaning and a possible meaning; as ... when George Herbert says,

 

         I gave to Hope a watch of mine,

         But he an anchor gave to me,

 

the watch suggests both the brevity of life and the longness of it; and an anchor makes you secure but holds you back." (p. 125)

 

That T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens have certain qualities in common perhaps is obvious -- in reticent candor and emphasis by understatement. (p. 142)

 

In "The Music of Poetry," Mr. Eliot sats, "Poetry must give pleasure"; "find the possibilities of your own idiom"; "poetry must not stray too far from the ordinary language we use and hear" -- principles in keeping with the following statements quoted by Mr. Eliot from W. P. Ker: "the end of scholarship is understanding," and "the end of understanding is enjoyment," "enjoyment disciplined by taste." (p. 143)

 

My own revisions are usually the result of impatience with umkempt diction and lapses in logic; together with an awareness that for most defects, to delete is the instantaneous cure. (p. 170)

 

Reinhold Niebuhr is not famed as easy reading, but is at times a study in precision as when he says, "The self does not realize itself most fully when self-realization is its conscious aim." (p. 171)

 

Curiosity seems to me connected with this sense of significance. Thoreau, you may recall, demurred when commended for originality and said that it was curiosity: "I am curiosity from top to toe." (p.180)

 

Tyrone Guthrie, in connection with the theater, made a statement: ... "It is one of the paradoxes of art that a work can only be universal if it is rooted in a part of its creator which is most privately and particularly himself." (p. 182)

 

His[Lincoln's] use of words became a perfected instrument, acquired by an education largely self-attained -- "'picked up,'" he said, "under pressure of necessity." That the books read became part of him is apparent in phrases influenced by the Bible, Shakespeare, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Burns, Blackstone's Commentaries; and not least, by some books of Euclid -- read and "nearly mastered," as he says. after he had become a member of Congress. (p. 197)

 

With Rabelais and Joyce to bother him, Mr. Burke is sometimes coarse. Might he not recall that "the reader has certain categorical expectations that crave propriety?" that "self-expression of the artist is not distinguished by the uttering of emotion but by the evocation of emotion"? (p. 236)

 

With me it's always some fortuity that traps me. I certainly never intended to write poetry. That never came into my head. And now, too, I think each time I wrote that it may be the last time; then I'm charmed by something and seem to have to say something. Everything I have written is the result of reading or of interest in people, I'm sure of that. I had no ambition to be a writer. (p. 256)

 

I was just trying to be honorable and not to steal things. I've always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better? If I wanted to say something and somebody had said it ideally, then I'd take it but give the person credit for it. (p. 260)

 

But rectitude has a ring that is implicative, I would say. And with no integrity, a man is not likely to write the kind of book I read. (p. 271)

 

That's the beauty of it; he[William Carlos Williams] is willing to be reckless; if you can't be that, what's the point of the whole thing? (p. 273)

 

 

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Marianne Moore는 Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)의 친구이자 멘토였다. ( Denise Levertov의 멘토는 William Carlos Williams ) 

 

Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore

May 1, 2015 by emmaclairesweeney