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Poetry And Pedagogical Tone In Marianne Moore's Poetry

Decent Essays

In Marianne Moore’s poem, “Poetry,” the reader is taught to face difficult topics head on by the speaker discussing how poetry seems hard, but is really beneficial and interesting. Through the use of periodic sentences, imagery, and a pedagogical tone, the speaker is able to convince the reader than poetry can be interesting. The first stanza starts off differently from what the reader expects. The speaker says, “I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.” It’s ironic how the speaker claims to not like poetry, yet writes a poem about her disliking to it. The speaker also states that poetry is not as important as other aspects of life. However, the speaker presents a new side to poetry by declaring, “Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.” This sentence is special because it is an example of a periodic sentence, in which the meaning of the sentence is delayed until the final clause. It forces the reader to understand that poetry takes time to connect with and understand, and the sentence also reflects how poetry itself usually doesn’t make sense until the very end. …show more content…

She says “the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.” The speaker suggests that many people don’t like poetry because it’s hard for them to comprehend or interpret. This idea is continued throughout the third stanza, which uses imagery to support her ideas. She uses images such as “elephants pushing,” “a tireless wolf under a tree,” and “the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea” in order to compare poetry to nature. Poetry should be like nature; it should be useful and as important as any other work of

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