Empress of Observation: Marianne Moore’s Verse, Her World of Animals, and Some Human Interests

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Empress of Observation: Marianne Moore’s Verse, Her World of Animals, and Some Human Interests DE GUZMAN, MIA MILAGROS T. III-17 BSE ENGLISH TERM PAPER – AMERICAN LITERATURE PROF. MARLA PAPANGO Early to mid 20th Century marked the reign of Modernist writers – veering from the rigid, form-focused traditional ways of the previous eras. Amongst the many modernists, Marianne Moore is one of the most radical figures in poetry and prose. Predominantly, most of her works were able to target human subjects with inimitable her use of animal imagery. With this unique take, she probed independence and humor in verse through her acute observations of animal. Marianne Moore was born of construction engineer and inventor John Milton Moore and his wife, Mary Warner in Kirkwood, Missouri. She grew up in her grandfather's household after her father was committed to a mental hospital before her birth. In 1905, she entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 1915, when she began to publish poetry professionally. She was exposed to avant-garde poetry and criticism. Her works garnered different notorious awards (Helen Haire Levinson Prize, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize) especially her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry", in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." Moore never married and her living room has been preserved in its original layout in the collections of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia and is available for public viewing. In 1996, she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. (PoemHunter.com, 2014) Marianne Moore devoted her life to study and write about animals, being once a biologists. Critics have varied takes on

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