Marianne Moore’s “Poetry” is fascinating because it speaks to the definition of poetry, and what its purpose and value is. The poem describes how “When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, . the same thing may be said for all of us, that we / do not admire what / we cannot understand” (ll. 8-11). This, in conjunction with the poem’s idea that poetry is “a place for the genuine” (l. 3), expresses that poetry written just for the sake of creating intelligent-sounding phrases. It reminds me of Pope’s An Essay on Criticism in its argument that poetry should have something meaningful to say. Here, I understand her to be arguing that poetry should have a language element that is intriguing and “raw,” but should also have a real meaning behind it, a concrete idea that is not a “high-sounding interpretation” (l. 7). 

The form of the poem plays into this somewhat. It is written in free verse, with no sort of meter or rhyme, and can be easily read as prose. She writes in complete sentences, with each sentence a self-contained idea, which brings about the question of what makes this work into poetry. From her argument in the poem, it seems that her answer is the ideas: that she is conveying a real idea in a format that cannot be accurately captured in another form of writing. 

“Poetry,” interestingly, was heavily revised over her lifetime. The footnote after the title says that the poem was eventually cut down to the first three lines, making the entire poem “I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. / Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers  in / it after all, a place for the genuine.” The choice to eliminate all other lines reflects the attitude towards poetry that she expresses in the poem. She takes out everything but, it seems, the heart of her argument: that poetry may not seem something good on first look, but it has the ability to convey real meaning. She adapts her work to better fit her ideal image of poetry.