Marianne Moore and the Purpose of Poetry
...ront to decency so profound that it occasioned the teeming multitudes of Europe to (in the most civilized manner possible) lop off their heads, destroy their cities, and otherwise open up a steaming hot cauldron of whup-ass on them. To appreciate the delicate sensibilities of Moore’s poetry, therefore, one must understand the signficance of the crusades, the theological intricacies of the dispute between Islam and Christianity, and the finer points of medieval warfare. Employed liberally in the latter were the broadsword, the mace, the head-lopper-offer, the gut-splatterer, the huge-rock-on-the-head, and other marvels of martial machinery. Moore addresses such matter in her characteristically saturnine and oracular way in her poem, “It’s Too Hot in Here”: Have you reckoned with the sea much? Have you reckoned with the mountains much? Have yo...