Where does the time go? I missed last week so I thought I’d make it up with two this time. And as promised, I’m going to try out Marianne Moore on y’all.

The book I have is The Poems of Marianne Moore, edited by Grace Schulman. 374 pages of poems, and I’m hard-pressed to find a single one I can understand. Almost every single poem — and many of them are quite short — contains words or names I don’t understand, and even the ones in relatively plain English demand much head-scratching. It’s quite humbling.

Here’s one of the easier ones:

Silence

My father used to say,

“Superior people never make long visits,

have to be shown Longfellow’s grave

or the glass flowers at Harvard.

Self-reliant like the cat –

that takes its prey to privacy,

the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth –

they sometimes enjoy solitude,

and can be robbed of speech

by speech which has delighted them.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;

not in silence, but in restraint.”

Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”

Inns are not residences.

Of course, the first thing I thought of when I read this was “Self-reliant like the cat? Huh. I wish my cat would take his prey to privacy!” ;)

Here’s one I don’t get, but it sounds kinda cool. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Man’s Feet Are a Sensational Device

Rest assured that netting butterflies,

Flying from mice,

And crushing spiders,

Is portentous cowardice.

The field of moral choice affords man’s

Feet crackling ice

To tread, and feet are

A sensational device.