When Marianne Moore Buys Pictures

Abstract

After reading Marianne Moore's poems in little magazines for nearly four years, Ezra Pound wrote to her in 1918 inquiring who she was and what her influences had been. Discovering a context for her unique talent has preoccupied Moore's admirers ever since. Pound guessed wrongly a French influence. Now critics debate where exactly to place Moore within the modernist constellation of Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. By 1918 Moore had read all four poets with considerable interest and had met Williams; however, she answered Pound that in New York, where she was then living, there is more evidence of power among painters and sculptors than among writers (Moore, A Letter 18). Critics have long acknowledged the importance of the visual arts to Moore-that she read widely about the arts, visited galleries and museums, and maintained friendships with painters and sculptors.' But important differences between the modernisms of Pound-Eliot-Stevens-Williams and