An Introvert as Celebrity Poet
How does an introvert come to glory in stardom in her old age? I explore the enigma of poet Marianne Moore.
I became interested in American poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972) when I saw someone referring to her as exemplifying “public solitude.” How was that not a contradiction?
Most of Moore’s poetry is insular, full of cerebral wordplay and clever rhythms, as far from memorizable verse or confessional works as one can imagine. Although she engaged professionally with the literary community of her day as an editor and correspondent, she remained emotionally private, never marrying and apparently never having love affairs. Then, surprise of surprises! In her sixties she became a prominent figure in American popular culture – as a swashbuckling, grandmotherly fan of baseball and boxing with a taste for irony and publicity.
Growing up in an unusually close family of an older brother and a well-educated mother who for a decade had a lesbian partnership, Marianne Moore graduated from Bryn Mawr College, where she studied biology and contributed poems to the school’s literary journal. She taught at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, worked for the New York City Public Library, then landed the job of editor for The Dial, a position that connected her with established and avant-garde poets of the time, including T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound.
Throughout this time, Moore lived a life of austerity, frugality, responsibility and reticence. People who crossed paths with her described her as eccentric, androgynous, both frail and alluring, self-effacing yet intellectually bold, and both remote and spirited. She had red hair that slowly faded to gray and then white, generally worn in braids wound around her head like a Grecian wreath of laurel leaves.
Moore’s published poems often invoked armored creatures like pangolins, snails, armadillos, scaly fish and mussels. The themes of concealment and protection from the outside world likewise showed up in some poems’ musings about the metal armor of knights. Additional preoccupations that seem quintessentially introverted can be seen in these snippets from her work:
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.
One must be as clear as one's natural reticence allows one to be.
O to be a dragon, / a symbol of the power of Heaven– / of silkworm / size or immense; at times invisible.
I do these / Things which I do, which please / No one but myself.
The mind is an enchanting thing.
Superior people never make long visits.
Moore’s life trajectory from cloistered intellectual to spotlighted luminary somewhat parallels that of scientist Isaac Newton. Newton led a mostly inward life of thinking and calculating until he was 53, when he left Cambridge University to run England’s Royal Mint. He later headed the country’s elite Royal Society and served in Parliament.
Although we might picture Newton carrying out public duties in an introverted manner, Moore’s rock-star-level fame late in life is harder to reconcile with a reserved personality. Moore appeared on the “Tonight Show,” in Sports Illustrated, in an ad for Braniff Airways and on the cover of Esquire magazine. At age 81 she threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. She wrote the liner notes for Muhammed Ali’s “I am the Greatest” album. Ford hired her to name their 1958 model, though they ended up choosing “Edsel” over Moore’s suggestions of “Mongoose Civique” and “Utopian Turtletop.” In photographs she favored a tricorn hat reminiscent of eighteenth-century rebels, an ink-black cape and dramatic lighting. All in all, this hints at someone delighting in public attention.
Yet according to Moore’s biographer Linda Leavell, Moore’s poetry readings and other public appearances depleted her in just the way many introverts report:
“Because a public performance or party was often followed by two or three weeks of illness, she learned to pace herself to allow recovery time. When possible, she refused social invitations that immediately preceded or followed her performance. Using her Bible class as an excuse, she often arrived at parties late in order to conserve strength.”
So we shouldn’t conclude that Moore underwent a personality change, from a stay-at-home near-nun when young to an elderly social butterfly. The question is rather why she relished celebrity. Plenty of writers at her level of acclaim hide out from the media, feeling that photo shoots for glossy magazines take too much time away from their work and undercut their cultural worth. (Think of Bob Dylan not deigning to go to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize.)
Critic Alex Mouw, in an essay called “Marianne Moore’s Public Solitude,” argues that Moore felt she had a duty to cultivate her individuality and felt that in so doing, she made it possible for others to do the same. It’s true that her image during her media-darling era always highlighted her unconventionality. On this interpretation, that individuality was a gift to others. However, this theory doesn’t account for the delight she apparently took in being recognized and feted on a grand scale by people who never read her poems. Was that simply vanity? I wonder whether her poems’ focus on creatures with armor had as much to do with that outer shell as a clever form of packaging as with the casing as protection.
After reading two biographies and several critical essays about her, I’m still puzzled by Marianne Moore’s enigmatic embrace of celebrity. Perhaps it just bears out what a predecessor of hers in American poetry, Walt Whitman, wrote:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Perhaps in her latter years, Marianne wanted a taste of what fame was like. She had lived long enough to see that occasional outings, though hard on her body, were good as creative fodder. She was also demonstrating that older women could be interesting, intelligent, and of value in a society that venerates youth. I think it's interesting that the media and culture also embraced her; perhaps she suggested to them the "wise old woman" archetype?