Biography
American poet Marianne Craig Moore was born on November 15, 1887, in St. Louis, Mo. From 1905 to 1909, she attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she began to write poetry in earnest.
After college she taught stenography, English, and bookkeeping in Carlisle, PA, while reading and ultimately submitting her own work to Avant Garde poetry journals of the day, including The Egoist, Others, Poetry, and The Little Review.
As her arts career took hold, Moore was also actively involved in woman's suffrage activities and marches.
Through the 1920's, she lived in New York City with her mother, devoting her time to writing poetry reviews and corresponding with contemporaries like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, H.D., William Carlos Williams, and e.e. cummings.
In 1921, her first collection, titled simply Poems was published in London by the Egoist Press. An expanded American edition, Observations, followed in 1924. (This early collection contains what may be Moore's most reknowned work, "Poetry," which begins: "I, too, dislike it.")
From 1925 to its dissolution in 1929, Moore served as editor of The Dial. In this position, she was able to advance the standing of Advant Garde arts in the U.S., although she gained a reputation for being highly particular in her selections for the magazine and sometimes drastically altering those poems she chose. "The Dial bought my ... poem but insisted (Marianne Moore did) on ... cutting it up until you would not recognize it," Hart Crane wrote to friends.
After The Dial folded, Moore moved to Brooklyn to focus on work
of her own. She produced poetry at a steady clip throughout the 1930's
and developed mentoring relationships with several younger female poets
like Elizabeth Bishop.
By the 1950's, Moore had become a celebrated public figure, something of a Grand Old Dame of American Letters. Her prose appreared in places like Ladie's Home Journal and Seventeen. In addition to acquiring 16 honorary degrees, a Pullitzer Prize, and a National Book Award for her poems, she also worked in translation and play-writing in this decade.
In the early 1960's, Moore began to suffer the pressures of age, and may have had a minor stroke, noting to a friend, "Nearly every word I write now lacks a final letter." Still, she remained much in demand. She dined with Cassius Clay at Toot Shor's restaurant, threw out the first ball at the 1966 Yankees opener, and graced the covers of Esquire and Vogue. Her Complete Poems was published in 1967, near her 80th birthday, and she continued on writing until a stroke disabled her in 1969. She died in her sleep on Feb. 5, 1972, in New York City.
Selected Bibliography
Complete Poems, Penquin, New York,1997
Selected Letters, Penguin, New York, 1997.
In 1955, an executive from the Ford Motor Company asked the poet Marianne
Moore to assist them in naming a new model of automobile then in development.
Moore's suggestions:
The Edsel sold poorly upon its introduction in 1958, moving only 63,000
cars while American Motors sold 200,000 Ramblers. The car featured a
horseshoe-shaped grill which reviews at the time claimed appeared like:
" an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon
or a Pontiac pushing a toilet seat."
Although sales of a redesigned Edsel began to increase sales in the final months of1959, Ford discontinued the Edsel with only just over 110,000 sold.
The Edsel remains the sine qua non of fifties automotive kitsch. Where Henry Ford once claimed that the Model T came in any color so long as it was black, the Edsel was available in Gee-Whiz 1950s colors, including Snow White, Moonrise Gray, Sea Foam Green, Mist Green, Jonquil Yellow, and "Redwood Metallic," which seems to have been a fancy name for "Brown and Shiny." The 1960 line added the colors Alaskan Gold Metallic and Hawaiian Blue in honor of the admission of the two states in 1959. The Chalk Pink model of 1958 was so unpopular with consumers, even along Edsel standards, that Ford replaced it in 1959 with the Talisman Red model — although the color of the car had not actually changed.
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The Anticipator
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The Thunder Crester
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The Silver Sword
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The Regna Racer
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The Magigravue
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The Turcotingo
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The Pastelogram
- The Varsity Stroke
- The Mongoose Civique
- The Utopian Turtletop
- The Intelligent Whale
- The Reslient Bullet
- The Adante Con Moto
Ultimatelly, Ford bypassed Moore, as well as all of the suggestions the public submitted in a national contest, naming the bubble-top vehicle after the only son of the company's founder, Edsel Ford.