Marianne Moore

From Philosopedia

Moore, Marianne (15 November 1877– 5 February 1972)

Moore, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet for Collected Poems (1951) and author of Predilections (1955), wrote wittily, intellectually, and satirically. She was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, and her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, was a minister. Her father, John Milton Moore, a construction engineer and inventor had been committed to a mental hospital before she was born, and she was raised by her mother, Mary Warner, in her grandfather's household.

Moore entered Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and graduated four years later. She taught courses at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 1915, at which time she began to professionally publish poetry.

Asked in 1956 her view of humanism, Moore, a Presbyterian, responded:

I have not thought of myself as a humanist - was asked recently if I might not be called a moralist and perhaps I could be. I am much concerned about the irresponsibility of man for man. Casuists who are despots violate the rights of man, confused by the apparent triumph of other despots, unintentionally testifying to the fact that there is a moral law and that it is not transgressed with impunity - unconsciously emphasizing verities of the Apostle Paul in which they take no interest - that the servant of righteousness is made free and the wages of sin is death.

{WAS, 17 June 1956}