Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was born in 1887. She studied law, history and politology. She started to publish her works in 1915. Her activity captured attention of, among others, T.S. Eliot, about whom I wrote in my last post. Moore received the Pulizer Prize and was considered to be a remarkable poet.

As Moore belonged to the group of "Imagists", her poetry was in opposition to Romantic and Victorian art. Her poems are based on metaphores. Moore was very focused on details and the precision of language. 

The hen that laid the golden eggs

Take all that is there and forfeit increment,
          Is a truth too clear for argument
In the old fairytale in which golden eggs were laid
          One a day. The poor owner would stare
At the hen, till sure there was gold in her to share,
Then killed, spread out the bird, and was of course repaid
By no more than would be found in an ordinary hen.
He had cut the magic chain and she'd never lay again.

Generally speaking, Marianne Moore's poetry is very intellectual, she uses sophisticated vocabulary that is difficult to understand without an hour spent with a dictionnary. That's why I have chosen a poem in the convention of a tale, with easier vocabulary but, after all, very interesting. Moore shows us her intepretation of the tale about a hen (sometimes goose) that laid the golden eggs. 

The idiom to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs means 'to ruin or destroy something that brings one wealth'. But I like to think about this poem as a metaphore of creating new ideas. Each person is capable of fertile thinking that may result in creative ideas. But they are outomes of complex mechanisms, we create our 'golden eggs' not because we have this 'gold' inside. The magic chain is still a mystery that a simple 'spreading out' will not explain.  

Based on Wikipedia note and link.