Moore, Marianne

Letter from Marianne Moore to Mary and John Warner Moore ; Thursday, November 2, 1905.
A great many of the girls have Atlantic City plush bears and every girl I know has a China animal or grotesque likeness of one.

Marianne Moore and China : general.
Quellen
Animals in paintings from Asia. Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1965).
Baynes. Vol. 1-2. (New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, 1950). (Bollingen series ; 19).
Bynner, Witter. Laotzu. The way of life according to Laotzu [ID D30328]. [With notations].
Candolle, Alphonse de. Origin of cultivated plants. (New York, N.Y. : D. Appleton, 1886).
Master bronzes : selected from museums and collections in America. February 1937.
Confucius. The analects of Confucius. Transl. and ann. by Arthur Waley [ID D8879]. [With notations].
Confucius. Shih-ching : the classic anthology defined by Confucius. [Transl. by] Ezra Pound. [ID D29062].
Confucius. The unwobbling pivot and The great digest. Transl. by Ezra Pound. [ID D29063]. [1951, With notations].
Confucius to Cummings : an anthology of poetry. Ed. by Ezra Pound [ID D30334].
Costumes from the Forbidden City. Metropolitan Museum of Art (March 1945).
Cottrell, Annette B. Dragons. (Boston : Museum of Fine Arts, 1962).
Davis, Frank. The Chinese dragon. In : Illustrated London news ; Aug. 23 (1930).
Davis, Frank. The unnatural history of China : the lions of Buddha. In : Illustrated London news ; vol. 178 (1931).
Eaton, Evelyn. Go ask the river [ID D30339].
Encyclopedia Britannica.
European and Oriental sculpture. Anderson Galleries (Dec. 1928).
Exhibition of early Chinese paintings and sculptures. Bourgeois Gallery, New York (Nov.-Dec. 1922). [With notations].
Fang, Achilles. Rhymeprose on literature. In : Harvard journal of Asiatic studies (1951).
Franck, Harry Alverson. Roving through southern China [ID D3164].
Guang, Rusi. Chinese wit, wisdom and written characters [ID D30337].
Hackney, Louise Wallace. Guide-posts to Chinese painting. (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927).
Ji, Lu ; Hughes, E[rnest] R[ichard]. The art of letters : Lu Chi's "Wen fu", A.D. 302 [ID D30329].
Lin, Yutang. The Chinese theory of art [ID D30330].
The lost flute, and other Chinese lyrics [ID D30333].
Master bronzes. (Buffalo : Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, 1937).
Paine, Robert Treat. Animals in paintings from Asia. (Boston : Museum of Fine Arts, 1956).
Pallister, Bury. The China collectors : Parker companion. (London : Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle, 1874).
Pound, Ezra. Instigations of Ezra Pound ; together with an essay on the Chinese written character [ID D22141].
Reed, Stanley. Oriental rugs and carpets. (New York, N.Y. : Putnam, 1967).
The silent zero, in search of sound. Transl. by Erich Sackheim [ID D30336].
Sitwell, Osbert. Escape with me ! : an Oriental sketch book.[ID D3453].
Studies in Chinese literature. Ed. by John L. Bishop. [ID D10623].
Sze, Mai-mai. The tao of painting : a study of the ritual disposition of Chinese painting [ID D30310].
Sze, Mai-mai. The way of Chinese painting [ID D30335]. [Inscribed "For Marianne Moore this pocket version! Affectionately, Mai-mai Sze, November 24, 1959"].
Topsell, Edward. Historie of foure-footed beastes. (London : Printed by William Iaggard, 1607).
The treasure of Luhan. In : Metropolitan Museum of art bulletin. (Dec. 1919).
Wilhelm, Richard. The I ching : or, Book of changes. Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Vol. 1-2. (New York, N.Y. : Pantheon Books, 1950). (Bollingen series ; 19).
Worcester Art Museum news bulletin and calendar. (1955). [Article on Chinese jades and photos of Zhou dynasty dragon].
Xue, Tao. I am a thought of you [ID D30338].

Sekundärliteratur
1971-1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Marianne Moore states in the epigraph to her Complete poems : "Omissions are not accidents". We can assume that she is reticent about what she does not know well and that she will only "talk about them when I understand them".
She never makes direct references to or gives quotations of classical Chinese poetry in her work. But we find in her poetry some allusions to Chinese objects d'art. She finds 'precision' and 'fastidiousness' in many things Chinese.
1995
Lina Unali : Marianne Moore searched in the Orient and in China in particular, for new sources of artistic inspiration and regeneration. Sometimes this only led to a rephrasing of traditional values in more agreeable terms.
1997
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
brbl-archive.library.yale.edu Moore's interest in China stemmed in part from her friendship with a Presbyterian missionary family and her visits to New York galleries. Always intrigued by the exotic, she regularly sought elements of "the wisdom of the East" to illustrate her moral points.
1999
Cynthia Stamy : As a young adult, Moore was experiencing the East as strange and peculiar. China's unfettered ability to resist American religious assimilation, the Christian framework which was so important for the Moore family, must have made it seem seven more alien, and possibly more exotic. Her affinity for scholarly work on Chinese subjects from poetry to painting, calligraphy, chinoiserie, textile design, and religious history is evident not only in her poetry and appended notes, but also in prose work throughout her writing career. Moore was involved in the imaginative production of the Orient ; she posited China as a repository of wisdom, forbearance, peace, and tranquility. At different times, Moore uses Chinese poetry, art, and philosophy to resist the dictates of contemporary verse forms, the influence of European literature and art, the restrictions of a masculine logic, and the imposition of the demands of contemporary politics and mass culture. Moore's fascination with dragons of the Far East can be seen as symptomatic of her apparent need to invest China and things Chinese with an originary potency, to place moral statements against a ground of the ancient and even prehistoric. Moore practices a kind of poetic primitivism in her poems that include Chinese supernatural creatures which allies her work with that of modernist painters who engaged in a similar practice of juxtaposition. Moore's deployment of things Chinese in her poems is augmented by her respect for Chinese ingenuity and tradition. Her selectivity in choosing China's art, but not her history, China's imperial past, but not her peasantry, is itself a dated orientalist response which reflects an impression of China suited to her own needs.
Moore's original use of the Chinese 'fu' style of poetry is one successful instance of her consisten ingenuity in finding and employing 'new' form in her poetry. While Moore was not the first modern poet to prefer a Far Eastern form for expressing feelings and truths found in observations of nature, she used the model of the Chinese 'fu' in distinctive ways. The self-conscious antiquarianism of her repeated borrowing of 'fu' techniques exposes Moore's sens of the problematic nature of modernity, as she employed this ancient formal tributary model to pose questions about the moral and cultural significance of the present. Moore's 'fu'-inspired poems exhibit the kind of authority and didacticism which often characterize an ancient poetry. Like the Imagists and the practioners of the 'fu', Moore in her poetry exhibits a sustained use of a form of free verse within a very exacting structure. Her use of syllabic verse does not create its own rhythm and, therefore, the reader's attention is called to prose rhythms within the poem. The influences Moore seems to have absorbed from the 'fu', both in terms of structure and subject-matter, are distributed widely throughout her work and can be found in poems written both early and late in her career. Her interrelationships between the human and the natural were central to both the Confucian and Taoist traditions philosophies which Moore studied and referred to in her prose and poetry. Moore's syllabic verse also forms link with the Chinese language, in which each character is a single syllable.
Moore's familiarity with Chinese scrolls was such that she was capable of making references to a specific type of scroll which depicted characteristic scenes of the larger rivers in China.
2003
Qian Zhaoming : Marianne Moore showed a passion for the artifacts of late imperial China – the Yuan, Ming, and Qing products – throughout her long career. Moore is fond of going to Chinese art exhibitions primarily because they promise to educate her eyes. As her correspondence reveals, she takes delight not only in examining the exhibits but also in recounting her prized items. Moore's interest in Chinese art is primarily an interest in Chinese animal pictures illustrating an approach that might be called 'imaginative objectivism'. By studying Chinese animal pictures, Moore benefits more than just recapturing some images in her own poetry. The true value for Moore of the Chinese tradition of treating animals is that it braces up her objection to the Western bias of the animal genre. She had attended many Chinese art shows where she has the freedom of examining for herself how Chinese painters turn themselves into 'instruments' of actual life.
The Tao of painting by Mai-mai Sze awakened Moore to its true meaning and possibilities. It encouraged her to rethink the value of her own ambiguity and reserve in some early experiments. From Sze she has learned to overlook the distinction between Confucianism and Daoism / Buddhism.
2006
Victoria Bazin : Marianne Moore deploys imagery and tropes in circulation in the newspapers and literature she was reading on the subject of China and Chinese art and culture. Moore's respect for Eastern difference might appear to be an enlightened attempt to refuse the Orientalist impulse to accumulate knowledge of the 'other' thereby reinforcing Western hegemonic power, the fact that her poetic observations of 'China' reproduce it as a site of exotic and unfathomable otherness suggests its general complicity with European exoticism.

Moore, Marianne. Notebook.
[Notations on two meetings of the local Ladies' Missionary Society].
The meeting was opened with prayer ; after which, the roll was called, each of those present reciting a verse of scripture as her name was called… the subject for discussion - 'The Chinese' was introduced… Mrs. King read an article on the Chinese & their peculiarities…Mrs. Barr & Mrs. Merwood read articles on the easiest ways & means to adopt, to convert the Chinaman…

Notebook
Pound – Li Po. Epitaph
And Li Po also died drunk
He tried to embrace a moon
In the yellow river.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; December 12, [19]15.
poets.org Himurjian took us for luncheon to a Turkish restaurant, the Constantinople. We had soup and pieces of meat roasted on skewers and meat fried in grapeleaves and rice and pastry and ice cream. We then saw some ancient Chinese rugs at an Armenian wholesale rug place and an importer there took us to see the processes of silk making.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; Nov. 2, 1919.
Yamanaka's had enormous lengths of silk, a red one, a white one, and a blue one hanging in the window and then to fill in the space, a venetian red one which made the whole thing kook neither American nor Chinese.

Moore, Marianne. The complete poems [ID D30312].
1920
Moore, Marianne. Picking and choosing. In : Dial ; April (1920).
… Gordon Craig with his "this is I" and "this is mine", with his three wise men, his "sad French greens", and his "Chinese cherry"…

1921
Moore, Marianne. England. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921).
“…The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language…”

1921
Marianne Moore. He made this screen. In : Moore, Marianne. Poems. (London : The Egoist Press, 1921).
He made this screen
not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space --
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.

1922
Moore, Marianne. People's surroundings. In : Dial ; June (1922).
…When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use ;
the highway hid by fir trees in rhododendron twenty feet deep,
the peacocks, hand-forged gates, old Persian velvet,
roses outlined in pale black on an ivory ground,
the pierced iron shadows of the cedars,
Chinese carved glass, old Waterford, lettered ladies ;
landscape gardening twisted into permanence…
a green piece of tough translucent parchment,
where the crimson, the copper, and the Chinese vermilion of the poincianas
set fire to the masonry and turquoise blues refute the clock…

1923
Moore, Marianne. Bowls. In : Secession ; no 6 (July 1923).
on the green
with lignum vitae balls and ivory markers,
the pins planted in wild duck formation,
and quickly dispersed –
by this survival of ancient punctilio
in the manner of Chinese carved carving,
layer after layer exposed by certainty of touch and unhurried incision…

1923
Moore, Marianne. Novices. In : The chapbook : a monthly miscellany ; no 36 (April 1923).
… averse from the antique
with "that tinge of sadness about it which a reflective mind always feels,
it is so little and so much"…
Note : Line 15 : "The Chinese objects of art and porcelain disperses by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson on the 18th had that tinge of sadness which a reflective minde always feels ; it is so little and so much". Arthur Hadyn, Illustrated London News, February 26, 1921.

1924
Moore, Marianne. Sea unicorns and land unicorns. In : Dial ; Nov. (1924).
…Thus personalities by nature much opposed,
can be combined in such a way
that when they do agree, their unanimity is great,
"in politics, in trade, law, sport, religion,
China-collecting, tennis, and church-going".

1924
Moore, Marianne. Well moused, lion. In : The Dial ; no 76 (Jan. 1924).
Review of Stevens, Wallace. Harmonium. (New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 1923).
jstor.org One feels, however, an achieved remoteness as in Tu Muh's [Du Mu] lyric criticism. : "Powerful is the painting… and high is it hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion"…
In his positiveness, aplomb, and verbal security, he has the mind and the method of China ; in such controversial effects as :
Of what was it I was thinking ?
So the meaning escapes…

1932
Moore, Marianne. No swan so fine. In : Poetry ; vol. 41, no 1 (Oct. 1932).
"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chinz china one with fawn¬
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Oswald, Elaine ; Gale, Robert L. On Marianne Moore’s life and career.
english.illinois.edu Swan So Fine" suggests that a beautiful china swan, symbol of art, has serenely outlasted Louis XV of France, its cocky whilom owner.

1933
Moore, Marianne. The plumet basilisk. In : Hound & horn ; vol. 7, no 1 (Oct/Dec. 1933).
In Costa Rica
In blazing driftwood
the green keeps showing at the same place ;
as, intermittently, the fire opal shows blue and green.
In Costa Rica the true Chinese lizard face
is found, of the amphibious falling dragon, the living firework…
As by a Chinese brush, eight green
bands are painted on
the tail – as piano keys are barred
by five black stripes across the white…
Note : Lines 13-15 : Frank Davis, 'The Chinese Dragon', Illustrated London News, August 23, 1930 : "He is the god of Rain, and the Ruler of Rivers, Lakes, and Seas. For six months of the year he hibernates in the depths of the sea, living in beautiful palaces … We learn from a book of the T'ang Dynasty that 'it may cause itself to become visible or invisible at will, and it can become long or short, and coarse or fine, at its good pleasure'." A dragon "is either born a dragon (and true dragons have nine sons) or becomes one by transformation." There is a "legend of the carp that try to climb a certain cataract in the western hills. Those that succeed become dragon."
Sekundärliteratur
1999
Cynthia Stami : In an early manuscript version of 'The plumet basiliks' Moore included four additional stanzas. These lines show that Asia, and particularly China, provide a source of that myth and story so critical to establishing this remove :
"This is the feather basilisk
of travellers' tales, of which a pair stood
bodyguard beside Confucius' crib : aquatic thing
lizard-fairy detested by such dragonhood
as Michael fought."
"When two plumet territories touch,
the masters of them are dramatic
without shedding blood, exerting charm as Chinese dragon –
whiskers in a crystal handle charm ; or as thick-
flowering orchids gather dragons, in the East, by forming
clouds for them."

1934
Moore, Marianne. Nine nectarines. In : Poetry ; vol. 45, no 2 (Nov. 1934).
Arranged by two's as peaches are,
at the intervals that all may live –
eight and a single one, on twigs that
grew the year before – they look like
a derivative ;
although not uncommonly
the opposite is seen –
nine peaches on a nectarine.
Fuzzless through slender crescent leaves
Of green or blue or both, in the Chinese style, the four
pairs' half-moon leaf-mosaic turns
out to the sun the sprinkled blush
of puce-American-Beauty pink
applied to beeswax gray by the
uninquiring brush
of mercantile bookbinding.
like the peach 'Yu', the red-
cheeked peach which cannot aid the dead,
but eaten in time prevents death,
the Italian peach nut, Persian plum, Ispahan
secluded wall-grown nectarine,
as wild spontaneous fruit was
found in China first. But was it wild ?
Prudent de Candolle would not say.
One perceives no flaws
in this emblematic group of nine, with leaf window
unquilted by 'curculio'
which someone once depicted on
this much-mended plate
or in the also accurate
unantlered moose or Iceland horse
or ass asleep against the old
thick, low-leaning nectarine that is the
color of the shrub-tree's brownish
flower.
A Chinese "understands
the spirit of the wilderness"
and the nectarine-loving kylin of pony appearance – the long-
tailed or the tailless
small cinnarmon-brown, common
camel-haired unicorn
with antelope feet and no horn,
here enameled on porcelain.
It was a Chinese
Who imagined this masterpiece.
Notes : (1) "The Chinese believe the oval peaches which are very red on one side, to be a symbol of long life… According to the word of Chin-noug-king, the peach 'Yu' prevents death. If it is not eaten in time, it at least preserves the body from decay until the end of the world." Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (Appleton, 1886 ; Hafner, 1959).
(2) New York Sun, July 2, 1932. The World Today, by Edgar Snow, from Soochow, China. "An old gentleman of China, whom I met when I first came to this country, volunteered to name for me what he called the 'six certainties'. He said : 'You may be sure that the clearest jade comes from Yarkand, the prettiest flowers from Szechuen, the most fragile porcelain from Kingtehchen, the finest tea from Fukien, the sheerest silk from Hangchow, and the most beautiful women from Soochow."
(3) Line 41 : Kylin (or Chinese unicorn). Frank Davis, Illustrated London News, March 7, 1931. "It has the body of a stag, with a single horn, the tail of a cow, horses's hoofs, a yellow belly, and hair of five colours."
Sekundärliteratur
1971-1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : "Nine nectarines" was originally entitled "Nine nectarines and other porcelain". The might have gained her knowledge of the kylin not only through the Illustrated London news but also through her coinnoisseurship of Chinese porcelain. Moore introduces to her American readers a familiar symbol in classical Chinese art, 'the nectuarine-loving kylin, better known to the Chinese as the qilin, the fabulous beast resembles the Chinese dragon in its appearance. That the kylin is gentle evene benevolent is attested by a description in the Shi jing. Because a kylin 'was seen just before the birth of Confucius', it is regarded as a personal emblem of Confucius.
1995
Lina Unali : The poem is an appreciation of Chinese culture, of Chinese porcelain, of the objects painted on it, of their significance. At the root of Moore's inspiration there is always a need to communicate a dynamic discovery of new values objectified in natural elements and in artefacts, the products of artistic of literary creation. Her attitude is fully positive, surprised, enchanted.
1999
Cynthia Stamy : Moore used only a single Chinese word, in 'Nine nectarines' referring to the 'yu' peach to which the Chinese attribute longevity and life-saving qualities. If she did not understand the fundamentals of pronunciation of the Chinese language, then it is likely that this syllable functioned for her as a proper noun or as and adjective.
2003
Qian Zhaoming : In June 1934, when Moore sent her poem Nine nectarines to 'Poetry' to be published together with The Buffalo, she offered the title 'Imperious ox, imperial dish' for both pieces. Evidently she was aware that her objet d'art adorned with a nectarine or peach motif was once a dish reserved in China for imperial use. Her image goes beyond a single picture to include features of several peach motifs on Ming-Qing wares.
2006
Victoria Bazin : In Nine nectarines the dialectic of the exotic and the everyday is embedded in the Chinese porcelain plate or, more specifically, the image depicted by the Chinese artist on the plate. The poem is a tribute to the art of the Chinese, then in terms of its sources, it becomes possible to trace the exotic back to its everyday origins. The poem reinforces 'china' as a site of exotic difference by repeatedly pointing to its own difficulties in translating this ancient art into its own Western terms. The attempt to translate pictures into words is compared to the attempts of the Western speaker to understand the inscrutable culture of the Orient. Subjects, verbs and conjunctives are excluded from a language intent on reproducing itself as a materially dense and complex moment rather than a sequential narrative. Yet the poem falters frequently in its attempt to imitate its graphic counterpart. In spite of itself, it offers information that refers to narrative sequence and chronology noting that the nectarines grow 'on twigs that grew the year before'. The art of the Chinese becomes not a form of enquiry or 'observation' but a distillation of something ancient, mystical and ultimately untranslatable. The accuracy of the Chinese artist's representational scene is linked rhetorically to the peach, the fruit that, according to Chinese lore, 'cannot aid the dead, but eaten in time prevents death'. Moore's poem is inscribed by the desire, producing an idealized image of Chinese art that is unfathomable and therefore beyond the reach of modernity's rationalizing processes. 'China' represents a Western and distinctly modernist fantasy of ideological immunity, signaling both the desire for and the impossibility of art forms 'untouched' by modernity. The attempt to resist co-opting 'China' to maintain its otherness, its distinctiveness from the Western imagination only serves to reveal the extent to which it is not 'a Chinese who imagined this masterpiece'.

1935
Moore, Marianne. Half deity. In : Direction ; no. 1 (Jan.-March 1935).
Defeated but encouraged by each new gust
of wind, forced by the summer sun to plant,
she stands on rug-soft grass ; though some are not
permitted to gaze informally
on majesty in such a manner as she
is gazing here.
Moore, Marianne. Note to Half deity in What are years (1941).
The note cites an interview by Edmund Gillian : 'Meeting the Emperor Pu Yi' (New York Sun ; no 1, Dec. 1934) and Pu Yi's remark : 'It is not permitted'.
Sekundärliteratur
Cynthia Stamy : The half deity is also 'half worm' – a butterfly. The poem takes on a parallel significance, reflecting on the unnatural restrictions which imperial life in China imposed.

1941
Moore, Marianne. He "Digesteth Harde Yron". In : Partisan review ; vol. 8, no 4 (1941).
He "Digesteth Harde Yron"
…in S¬like foragings as he is
preening the down on his leaden-¬skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda's very own
from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich¬ egg. And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it
grazed on as a gift to an
emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
in lake or sea till only the head shows.

1941
Moore, Marianne. Smooth gnarled crape myrtle. In : Moore, Marianne. The collected poems. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1941).
A brass-green bird with grass-
green throat smooth as a nut springs from
twig to twig askew, copying the
Chinese flower piece – business-like atom
in the stiff- leafed tree's blue-
pink dregs-of-wine pyramids
of mathematic
circularity…
as in the acrobat Li Siau Than,
gibbon-like but limberer,
defying gravity,
nether side arched up,
cup on head not upset –
China's very most ingenious man.

1951
Moore, Marianne. Critics and connoisseurs. In : Moore, Marianne. Collected poems. (New York, N.Y. ; Macmillan, 1951).
There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness. Certain Ming
products, imperial floor coverings of coach-
wheel yellow, are well enough in their way but I have seen something
that I like better…

1956
Moore, Marianne. Logic and "the magic flute". In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956).
Up winding stair,
here, where, in what theater lost ?
was I seeing a ghost –
a reminder at least
of a sunbeam or moonbeam
that has not a waist ?
by hasty hop
or accomplished mishap,
the magic flute and harp
somehow confused themselves
with China's precious wentletrap…

1956
Moore, Marianne. Tom Fool at Jamaica. In : Moore, Marianne. Like a bulwark. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1956).
"Chance is a regrettable impurity."
Sekundärliteratur
David Hsin-Fu Wand : Marianne Moore has the habit of quoting from other writers, including such lines from the Yi jing.

1959
Moore, Marianne. O to be a dragon. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1959).
If I, like Solomon, …
could have my wish –
my wish … O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven – of silkworm
size or immense ; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon !
Note : Dragon : see secondary symbols, Volume II of The Tao of Painting, translated and edited by Mai-mai Sze, Bollingen Series 49 (New York : Pantheon, 1956 ; Modern Library edition, p. 57).
Sekundärliteratur
1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Moore was appropriating a symbol commonly found in both classical Chinese art and literature. For the dragon as a symbol in her poetry is not the evil Occidental dragon, it is the benevolent Chinese dragon which befriends the people, and especially the framers, to whom it brings rain and fertile crops. Moore's wish 'to be a dragon' is an invocation to 'the power of heaven' to help her become adaptable or flexible in her own writing. Although she uses the symbol of the Chinese dragon, she does not sound like any classical Chinese poet. This is because the form and rhythm of her poem are idiosyncratically Moore's and do not bear the slightest resemblance to those of any Chinese poem. She utilized the Chinese symbol to serve her own purpose, since she harnesses the Chinese dragon as her muse in her poetic journey.
1995
Lina Unali : Moore describes the mythical animal of the Chinese tradition as a symbol of power and expresses her wish to identify with it. The meaning of the poem is to be found in the relationship between two different artistic and intellectual experiences, both acquired by the poet, that of the Chinese iconographic tradition and of Taoism as expounded by Chinese masters such as Laozi and Zhuangzi. In Moore the dragon became the emblem of a multiplicity of elements that she probably felt Western culture had not been able convincingly to produce though most of her favourite animals shared some of the traits of the Chinese dragon. In her poetic imagination the dragon's power lies in the immense number of its often contrasting all-positive capacities. The dragon is interpreted by Moore as a powerful symbol of all beneficent tendencies, of all vitality, beauty, respect for human life, elevation, power on earth and in the heavens.
1999
Cynthia Stamy : Moore chose from among several species of a dragon the 'long' dragon, a bringer of rain and a whimsical spirit of changeable aspect.

1962
Moore, Marianne. Blue bug. In : The New Yorker ; May 26 (1962).
… bug brother to an Arthur
Mitchell dragonfly,
speeding to left,
speeding to right ; reversible,
like "turns in an ancient Chinese
melody, a thirteen
twisted silk-string three-finger solo".
There they are, Yellow River-scroll accuracies.

1966
Moore, Marianne. Tell me, tell me. (New York, N.Y. : Viking Press, 1966).
… It appeared : gem, burnished rarity
and peak of delicacy –
in contrast with grievance touched off on
any ground – the absorbing
geometry of a fantasy :
a James, Miss Potter, Chinese
"passion for the particular", of a
Tired man who yet, at dusk,
Cut a masterpiece of cerise…

In March and April Marianne Moore visited and revisited the Exhibition of Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, New York, whose dragons, horses, buffaloes, and insects gave her a lesson on how seriously and artist might go about portraying nonhumans.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; March 25, 1923.
Tuesday we went to the Metropolitan with Mr. Wheeler to see the Chinese paintings. We pored over them, read the descriptions and made a complete survey of the collection. The animals were beautiful, a dragon appearing in a cloud, horses, water buffaloes and insects. There is a white falcon which as Mr. Wheeler said somewhat overrating it : 'it's like hammered silver'.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; April 8, 1923.
Yesterday we called on Mr. Faggi's friend, Miss Rubenstein, whom he asked us to call on about Christmas time. She was out and as she lives near the museum, we went over to look again at the Chinese paintings, stopping first to see the armor. One of the attendants took charge of us and discanted on history, armor making, the relative size of collections, the silk flags hanging from the roof and we were much benefitted.

Letter from Marianne Moore to Bryher ; May 5, 1923.
We have seen a loan exhibition of very old Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan, which would I think, interest you ; one of 'spirited horses' – a series of white horses with scarlet pompoms and smoky manes and tails ; one of a dragon in the clouds, concealed but for a few claws ; Enjoying the Breeze in a Fishing-Boat which made me think of the Oxford punt, and one of supremely delicate brush work called Herd Boys Returning Home in which two elderly peasants are mounted on water oxen upon whose skin whorls are indicated with minute brush strokes in a darker colour so blended as to be imperceptible except upon scrutiny. We also examined the manuscript of a poem on Wang Wei : 'He took ten days to paint a river and five days a rock. A masterpiece cannot be4 produced in haste or by pressure. It was after bestowing such pains as these that Wang Tsai allowed his work to remain. Powerful is the painting of the Fang Hu mountains of the Kuen Lun Range, and high it is hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion'. Since seeing the pictures, my only diversion has been the circus.

Moore, Marianne. Review of Hymen by H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]. In : Broom ; no 4 (Jan. 1923).
"In this instinctive ritual of beauty, at one old and modern, one is reminded of the supernatural yellows of China."

Moore, Marianne. The Lost Flute of the Book of Franz Toussaint. In : The Dial ; no 77 (Sept. 1924). [Review].
The Lost Flute of the Book of Franz Toussaint, translated by Gertrude Joerissen (Brentano). In this collection of Chinese lyrics, early and modern, the decoratively perfect poetic properties of the East are like the titles of the poems, themselves, dazzling. The subject matter of a number of the poems seems insufficient or unworthy, but there are certain masterpieces, and since the labor of translation has been undertaken with delight, the reader deplores an ingratitude which permits him to confiscate the meaning of words with which he quarrels.

Moore, Marianne. Well moused, lion. In : The Dial ; no 76 (Jan. 1924). [Review of Wallace Stevens' Harmonium. (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1923].
In this book, Stevens calls imagination "the will of things", "the magnificent cause of being", and demonstrated how imagination may evade "the world without imagination"… One feels, however, an achieved remoteness as in Tu Muh's [Du Mu] lyric criticism : "Powerful is the painting… and high is it hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion"…
In his positiveness, aplomb, and verbal security, he has the mind and the method of China ; in such controversial effects as :
Of what was it I was thinking ?
So the meaning escapes,
And certainly in dogged craftsmanship. Infinitely conscious in his processes, he says
Speak even as if I did not hear you speaking
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts.
Note : Tu Muh [Du Mu] : Tang period Chinese poet whose work Marianne Moor4e had seen at the Metropolitan Museum in an exhibition of Chinese paintings, 7 April 1923.

Moore, Marianne. "Literature the noblest of the arts". In : The Dial ; no 79 (Oct. 1925). [Review of The collected essays and papers of George Saintsbury, 1875-1920.]
"The contributor who is not allowed to contribute", says Mr. Saintsbury, "is fierce as a matter of course ; but not less fierce is the contributor who thinks himself too much edited, and the contributor who imperatively insists that his article on Chinese metaphysics shall go in at once, and the contributor who, being an excellent hand at the currency, wants to be allowed to write on dancing : and, in short, as the Shepherd says, all contributors."

Moore, Marianne. "New" poetry since 1912. In : Anthology of magazine verse for 1926. Ed. by William Stanley Braithwaite. (Boston : B.J. Brimmer, 1926).
The "new" poetry seemed to justify itself as a more robust form of Japanese poetry – that is perhaps to say, of Chinese poetry – although a specific and more lasting interest in Chinese poetry came later.

Moore, Marianne. Roving through southern China. In : The Dial ; no. 81 (July 1926). [Review of Roving through southern China, by Harry A. Franck (Century)]. [ID D3164].
In this 'plain' account of people, of places, and of methods of travel in southern China – with many photographs – a seemingly experiences elasticity of judgment is, in matters not topical nor topographical, multifariously contradicted. The religious philosopher, the political scientist, the student of civilization would, in certain opinions diverge from this author : the 'littérateur' would not accompany him. Mr. Franck is scientific as a wanderer if not as a thinker or as a writer. His itinerary is impressive and he is, if one may have in one's feet a science which one has not in one's head, an accomplished traveler.

Moore, Marianne. Academic feeling. In : The Dial ; no 82 (May 1927).
One cannot be dead to the sagacity inherent in some specimens of sharkskin, camellia-leaf, orange-peer, semi-eggshell, or sang-de-boeuf glaze ; nor be blind to the glamour of certain 'giant', 'massive', 'magnificent' objects in pork-fat or spinach-green jade as shown last winter in the collection of Mr. Lee Van Ching at the Anderson Galleries.
[Betr. Chinese carved jades & objects of art : a collection formed by Lee Van Ching, Shanghai : rare antiques in crystal, agate, jade, rose quartz & malachite, statuettes, snuff bottles, porcelains & enamels, old Chinese pottery, Anderson Galleries, New York, Jan. 1927.]

Moore, Marianne. To accept congratulations. In : The Dial ; no 84 (March 1928).
We confessed to admiring instinctiveness, concentration, and tentativeness ; to realizing that gusto is not incompatible with learning, and to favoring opulence in asceticism. It is apparent also in lines by Sung Lien that such liking is not recent.
"In the dormitory I had two meals a day, but nothing fresh, fat, or of any good taste. All other schoolmates were dressed up in fine silk and with embroidery ; their hats were decorated with jewels ; their girdles made of white jade. Every one bore a sword on his left, and perfume at his right. They looks as shining and dignified as angels. While living among them I wore my cotton robe and tattered clothes, but had not the slightest desire to be like them, for I had my enjoyment focused upon something different, knowing not that my bodily wants were not as well supplied as those of others." Translated from the Chinese by Kwei Chen. Literary Magazine of the University of Wisconsin. December, 1927.
[Betr. Song, Lian. Farwell to my young friend.]

Wen xue xin lu : Ying Mei ming jia fang tan lu. Shan Dexing bian yi. (Taibei : Shu lin chu ban gong si, 1998). (Wen xue cong shu; 7). [Interviews aus Paris review mit Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer].
文學心路 : 英美名家訪談錄

Wand, David Happell Hsin-fu [Wang, David Rafael]. Cathay revisited : the Chinese tradition in the poetry of Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder. (Los Angeles, Calif. : University of Southern California, 1972). Diss. Univ. of Southern California, 1972.

Unali, Lina. Taoist concepts and Chinese imagery in the poetry of Marianne Moore. In : Tamkang review ; vol. 18, nos 1-4 (1987-1988). In : La memoria : annali della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell' Università di Palermo, 1995.
sunmoonlake.net.