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Reinforcements

1887 –

1972

The vestibule to experience is not to
Be exalted into epic grandeur. These men are going
To their work with this idea, advancing like a school of fish through

Still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss
The idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the Greeks
Ring in our ears, but they are vain in comparison with a sight like this.

The pulse of intention does not move so that one
Can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but
The future of time is determined by the power of volition.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 6, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

Born in 1887, Marianne Moore wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other Modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily condensed and precise

Themes

About this Poem

“Reinforcements” appeared in the Egoist V, no. 6 (June–July 1918).

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Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in
   it after all, a place for the genuine.
      Hands that can grasp, eyes
      that can dilate, hair that can rise
         if it must, these things are important not because a

Marianne Moore

1920

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,

Marianne Moore

1924

The Fish

wade
through black jade.
       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

Marianne Moore

1921

Poems

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Reinforcements

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