لطلاب وطالبات الشعر كل يومين نذاكر قصيده

[خالد السبعي]

Poetry
Marianne Moore

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; 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: 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 feels a flea, the base¬
ball fan, the statistician—
nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”: 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”—above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.
Summary
Line 1
The poem begins with its speaker making a rather ironic statement about her distaste for poetry. The statement is contradictory because, while she does not prefer poetry, the speaker nevertheless expresses herself through the medium of a poem. The reason the speaker dislikes poetry may be inferred from the use of the word “fiddle.” Apparently the speaker believes that poetry can be trifling, or that the poetry-writing process involves too much petty tampering. The speaker’s conversational opening of the poem allows for a tone that seems casual, yet it is one that is marked by a witty intelligence.
Lines 2–3
These lines contain a statement that argues with the one given in line 1 and line 2. Here the speaker admits that although one may think oneself perfectly justified in despising the triviality of poetry, through poetry one also might find that which is real and honest. The beginning lines of the poem thus establish the dialectic that will be elaborated upon in the rest of the poem.
Lines 4–7
In these lines, the speaker gives specific examples of things that are “genuine,” and then she explains exactly how and why those things strike her as being original and sincere. The syntax of this sentence places the images of grasping hands, dilating eyes, and rising hair as close as possible to the word “genuine” from the previous sentence. Because Moore claims to have hated “connectives,” she relies on this syntactical proximity to imply a connection. Having made that connection, the sentence then progresses the logic of the argument. It states that functioning hands and eyes and hair are significant not because critics can deduct lofty conclusions about them but because they each serve a distinct purpose. The poem may be suggesting that, in good poetry, every detail must be functional rather than merely academic or ornamental.
Lines 8–11
The pronoun “they” in line 8 refers, in part, to the hands, eyes, and hair mentioned in line 4. On another level, the pronoun “they” also refers to any significant objects included in any poem. This section echoes the earlier suggestion that every detail within a poem should serve a purpose. These lines imply that if the meaning of an object within a poem is so obscure that it cannot be understood, then the poem will be confusing to its reader. The reader will not appreciate what she or he does not comprehend. Another possible interpretation of lines 8–11 is as a warning against the use of enigmatic symbolism in poetry.
Lines 12–19
These lines offer a catalog of the different types of “important phenomena” that are sometimes included in poetry but whose meanings are not necessarily understood as they should be. Moore frequently uses animals in her poetry to draw a connection between art and the natural world. Here, she provides images of a sleeping bat, “elephants pushing,” “a wild horse taking a roll,” and “a tireless wolf under / a tree.” The poem offers these creatures as examples of a kind of genuineness that is often misrepresented and misunderstood in poetry. However, the poem does not “discriminate” against the human kingdom, either: these lines acknowledge that poetry often concerns itself with the significant “phenomena” of the critic, the statistician, the baseball fan, business documents, and schoolbooks. Line 18 acknowledges that all such considerations are, indeed, significant.
The speaker’s tone becomes cautioning, even didactic, as she again qualifies one of her previous statements. Although she says in line 18 that the “phenomena” she mentions are important, she now warns against the use of such phenomena by “half poets.” The phrase “dragged into prominence” shows that the speaker believes that some poets force emphasis upon certain details within their poems. The speaker seems to think that certain subjects in poems are exploited, and when they are, “the result is / not poetry.” These lines serve to remind poets and readers alike of the dangers of superficiality in poetry.
Lines 20–24
Here, the speaker urges poets to strive to be “‘literalists of / the imagination.’” This phrase is a quote taken from W. B. Yeats. Moore often includes quotes from other literature within her own work as a way of responding to the ideas of other writers. In doing this, she demonstrates her belief that the ideas presented in literature should be so important as to be open to lively, ongoing response. Apparently, Moore believes that good writing integrates other literature.
The phrase “‘literalists of / the imagination’” contains a paradox. This phrase calls upon poets to be literalists, which means that they ought to present what they imagine word for word, without embellishment, and in such a way as to adhere to reality. Of course, such a task is nearly impossible when one is presenting that which is a product of the imagination. If something is imagined, then, by definition, it has no reality, no actuality. Undoubtedly, Moore recognizes the contradiction of this paradox. Perhaps she includes it here as a way of acknowledging the near impossibility poets face in using words to reconcile that which is imagined with that which is actual. Nevertheless, the paradox seems to serve as the ultimate standard toward which poets ought to strive in their representation of what is “genuine.”
Lines 22–24 then describe literalist poets as those that rise above arrogance and pettines, avoiding the tendency of half-poets, defined in line 19, to force pointless emphasis on an unnecessary subject. The word “triviality” echoes the word “fiddle” from line 2 and repeats the suggestion that sometimes poetry is not as vital as it could be.
The phrase “‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’” is a paradox that provides a visual complement to the paradox given in line 21 and line 22. (Although this paradox also is surrounded by quotations marks, its original source has never been found; therefore, it is generally attributed to Moore.) Through the example of real toads in imaginary gardens, the speaker shows the reader what she means by saying that poets must be “‘literalists of the imagination.’” Here, the poem suggests that good poetry is the “imaginary garden” in which “real toads”—or anything that is genuine—may reside. The speaker implies that only when a poet uses imagination to present reality in an honest way is a poem created.


Lines 25–29
These lines repeat the notion that poetry is created from a combination of imagination (“raw materials”) and reality (“that which is on the other hand / genuine”). The word “demand” indicates that the speaker thinks one must hold poetry to high standards. Although she acknowledges that much poetry does not yet meet these high expectations, the speaker admits that, in the meantime, it is still possible for one to be “interested” in poetry. The poem concludes with this resolution of the dialectic that was established in the poem’s opening lines.
theme
Nature
Nature was a popular subject for romantic poets who found in it their inspiration, energy, and, often, their reason for being. Modernist poets enlarged their conception of subject matter and of nature itself. Moore, even though she described the natural world with an almost scientific eye for detail, using decidedly unromantic language, nonetheless considered it a place of beauty and mystery. She underscores this attitude in the third stanza when she uses the odd behavior of animals as examples of what the human mind “cannot understand.” But like poetry, these behaviors should be embraced rather than ignored, as they embody the very “raw material” of life itself, which cannot be reduced to mean this or that, as critics would have it.
Modernism
Modern poetry has often been criticized for its obscurity and elitism, with some writers claiming that it shows a deliberate attempt to alienate general readers. Moore addresses this in her opening line when she claims about poetry: “I, too, dislike it.” What she implies here is that she dislikes the popular conception of modern poetry as writing that has nothing to do with the real world, and is often abstract. However, in the rest of her poem she utilizes explicitly modernist techniques, such as irony, allusion, paradox, quoting others, and incorporating footnotes—techniques that often invite the very accusation of elitism. In this way, she shows herself to be a true modernist, interested in process as much as product and embracing contradiction and abstraction while appearing to endorse unequivocal statements about the real world.
Imagination
Poets have paid homage to the idea of the imagination ever since romantics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth championed its powers, naming it as a crucial part in the poetic process. Coleridge, for example, distinguished between imagination and “fancy,” terms that previously had been used synonymously, by giving imagination a more important role. Whereas fancy merely reassembles sense impressions, the imagination synthesizes disparate impressions, ideas, etc. into a unified whole, a whole greater than its parts. Moore’s “Poetry” endorses this view as well, although she claims the imagination can only be effective if applied to stuff of the real world, that is, the “genuine.” This is one reason why Moore attacks critics, as they are champions of “understanding” more interested in analyzing than reseeing the world and accepting its contradictions and mysteries, which are indicative of the reality and of poetry itself.
Poetry
Categorizing writing into genres such as poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, and the like is often a vexing matter not only for bookstores and marketers but for poets and critics as well. Moore was particularly notorious for her ambivalence about labeling what she did, noting once that her writing is called poetry only because no one else knew what to call it. “Poetry” is ironic partly because of its name and the fact that its argument about poetry’s definition is never resolved. Moore’s writing resembles poetry the most in its physical appearance, as she makes innovative use of line breaks and indentation. However, her choppy rhythms, use of multi-claused sentences, quotations, and footnotes all give her writing the appearance of prose. Partly, this approach to poetry stems from Moore’s affinity with the Imagist movement, members of which argued that, to rejuvenate poetry, meter should be replaced by the rhythms of colloquial speech and conventionally poetic diction should be replaced by contemporary language and phrasing.
style
“Poetry” is constructed in syllabic verse, which is a sub-category of free verse. Free verse means that the poem does not follow a regular pattern of rhyme and meter. Meter refers to units of stressed and unstressed syllables. Instead, the poem loosely relies on “syllabics,” which refers to the number of syllables per line. In syllabic verse, the number of syllables in any given line in a stanza is the same as the number of syllables of the same given line in the other stanzas. For example, you will notice that the final lines of each stanza in “Poetry” all contain thirteen syllables. Although Moore varies her syllabics, if one counts the syllables throughout the poem, one will notice a rough pattern emerging. By relying on syllabics instead of rhythm and meter, Moore is able to create a poem that more closely follows the patterns of natural speech.
Moore varies the typography of this poem. “Typography” refers to the way in which the poem is typed on the page. Moore often uses equal indentation to signify lines that rhyme. For example, the final words in line 4 and line 5 both rhyme (“eyes” and “rise”), and both lines are indented the same amount of spaces. The same may be said of line 27 and line 28 (“and” and “hand”). Not all of Moore’s rhymes appear at the end of the lines, nor are they necessarily true rhymes. Rather, some are slant rhymes, also known as off rhymes, which means that they are close in sound, but do not exactly rhyme. An example of an off rhyme is the “baseball fan” and the “statistician” in line 15. Rather than overwhelming her reader with blatant rhymes, Moore mutes them so that her reader may experience the pleasure of hearing similar sounds in the way they subtly occur in natural speech

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