Marianne Moore's Use of Animal Imagery

Abstract

Big and small, wild and domesticated--all kinds of animals roam freely in the deserts, jungles, forests, and gardens of Marianne Moore'ss poetry. They are so numerous that several years ago a scholar decided to include them in a solemn study of animals in modern poetry. Efficiently and conscientiously, he tabulated the number of times animals such as the antelope, the eagle, the lizard, or the rat appeared in the poems of Marianne Moore. As a matter of fact he even recorded the frequency of such fabulous creatures as the unicorn in her poetry.