Saturday, January 18, 2020

What is the rhythm and meter of "Poetry" by Marianne Moore?

Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry" is a short poem, with two versions—one a very brief, three-line poem about the poet's distaste for poetry, and the other roughly a page-long poem outlining the same sentiment. Moore uses this poem as a piece full of irony, expressing the fact that she is uninterested in typical poetry. She states clearly in the first line that she dislikes it and that there are much more important things in the world.
She uses the meter and rhythm of the poem to elucidate her feelings about poetry as well. This poem is jarring in its rhythmic scheme. It is free verse, meaning there is no truly defined structure or meter, nor is there a rhyme scheme. Each line has a different number of syllables and ends abruptly. While reading a normal prose sentence that, for instance, ends with the word "in" on one line and continues the next line with the word "it," it is very easy to continue with the flow of the thought. However, in a poem with deliberate line breaks, the mind automatically halts at the end of a line, expecting a definitive phrase or pause. This poem just stops abruptly, sending the reader reeling forward like a car lurching to a stop.
Moore's use of jolting, abrupt line breaks and loose, even nonexistent, form and structure in the poem illuminates the fact that it is not a normal piece of poetry—just the opposite, in fact. It is void of any of the natural and most well-known aspects of poetry. Therein lies its genius, however, as the poem smooths itself out in the final stanza. While it maintains its free verse, the lines become a little more tolerable, finishing closer to full sentences or phrases with each line. This stanza is about the idea that interest in the raw elements of poetry, such as beauty, nature, or human emotions, leads to genuine poetry. The final meaning of the poem, then, is that poetry need not have a rigid structure. In fact, in Moore's eyes, the concept of poetry should remain free. Her poem exemplifies this idea. It lacks everything that often makes a poem structured and even rhythmic to read, and it is rather jarring because of its strange meter and abrupt transitions, but it is still poetry, because it focuses on the inspiration behind poetry, not on form or structure.

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