Marianne Moore

Moore, Marianne, 1887–1972, American poet, b. St. Louis, grad. Bryn Mawr College, 1909. She lived mostly in New York City, working first as a librarian and later as acting editor of the Dial (1925–29). Her poetry, constructed like a precise mosaic, is witty, intellectual, and often satirical. Volumes of her verse include Poems (1921), Observations (1924), What Are Years? (1941), Collected Poems (1951; Pulitzer Prize), O to Be a Dragon (1959), and Complete Poems (1967). Among her other works are the translation The Fables of La Fontaine (1954) and the essays Predilections (1955).

See her complete poems (1967, repr. 1982); Selected Letters ed. by B. Costello (1997); studies by G. W. Nitchie (1969), B. Costello (1981), M. Holley (1988), and C. Goodridge (1989).

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