The Reader Of Marianne Moore

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I became a devoted reader of Marianne Moore s poetry while attending college in the early 1930's. A school friend and her mother, both better read and more sophisticated in their literary tastes than I was, were the first to mention her poetry, and soon I had read every poem of Moore's I could find.

I had not known poetry could he like that: her treatment of topics as diverse as glaciers and marriage struck me, as it still does, as a miracle of language and construction. Patek Philippe Replica Why had no one ever written about these things in this clear and dazzling -way before?
As luck had it, when I first began searching for a copy of her volume entitled Observations, I found that the college library didn't own one. Eventually, though, I did borrow a copy, but from one of the librarians, Fanny Border, not from the library. And I received an invitation to meet Marianne Moore in the process.

In retrospect, Fanny Borden seems like a most appropriate person to have suggested I might meet Marianne Moore. Borden was extremely shy and reserved ...
... and spoke in such a soft voice it was hard to hear her at all. The campus rumor was that her personality had been permanently subdued by her family history: the notorious Lizzie Borden of Fall River was her aunt.

Contact with Fanny Borden was rare. Occasionally, in search of a book, students would be sent to her office, shadowy and saclike, with books piled everywhere. She weighed down the papers on her desk with smooth, round stones, quite big stones, brought from the seashore. My roommate once commented on one in particular, and Borden responded in her almost inaudible voice, "Do you like it? You may have it, " and handed it over.

One day I was sent to her office about a book. During our talk, I finally got up my Longines
Replica courage to ask her why there was not a copy of Observations by that wonderful poet Marianne Moore in the library. She looked ever so gently taken aback and inquired, "Do you like Marianne Moore's poems?" I said I certainly did, the few I had been able to find. She then said calmly, "I've known her since she was a girl, " and followed that with the question that was possibly to influence the whole course of my life, "Would you like to meet her?" I was painfully shy and I had run away many times rather than face being introduced to adults of much less distinction than Marianne Moore. Yet I immediately said, "Yes. "