Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.
Marianne Moore
England
with voices—one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept—the
criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy with its equal
shores—contriving an epicureanism from which the grossness has been
and France, the “chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly” in
whose products, mystery of construction diverts one from that which was the object of one’s
search—substance at the core: and the far East with its snails, its emotional
all of museum quality: and America where there
is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south, where cigars are smoked on the
street in the north; where there are no proof readers, no silkworms, no digressions;
not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand
but in plain American which cats and dogs can read! The letter “a” in psalm and calm, when
pronounced with the sound of “a” in candle, is very noticeable but
fact? Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous? In the case of mettlesomeness which may be
mistaken for appetite, of heat which may appear to be haste, no con-
that one has not looked far enough. The sublimated wisdom
of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed
in the verbs of the Hebrew language, the books of the man who is able
I do,”—the flower and fruit of all that noted superi-
ority—should one not have stumbled upon it in America, must one imagine
that it is not there? It has never been confined to one locality.