3 Review(s)

The landmark oeuvre of Marianne Moore, one of the major inventors of poetic modernism, has proved difficult to present entire. Until now, there has been no good vantage point from which to see the body of her remarkable work as a whole. Throughout her life Moore arranged and rearranged, visited and revisited, a large majority of her existing poetry, interspersing new work among old, and continually revising even her best-known poems. As a result, sorting out the complex textual history that she left behind is a pressing task if we mean to represent the complete picture of her work as a poet. New Collected Poems undertakes that work, providing a newly accurate portrait of Moore's skillful and singular voice, and of the modernist culture she helped create.William Carlos Williams, remarking on the impeccable precision of her poems, found in them "the aesthetic pleasure engendered when pure craftsmanship joins hard surfaces skillfully." It is only in New Collected Poems that we can read Moore's work as Williams and many other illustrious admirers knew it. Edited by Heather Cass White, one of the foremost scholars of Moore's work, this new collection at last allows readers to experience the full force of these dazzling poems as the author originally envisioned them.