La belle dame sans mercy

摘要

More than three decades have passed since the death of the odd, eccentric, brilliant Miss Moore, as she was always known, even to some of her closest friends, including the editor of this definitive edition of her collected poems. In 1968, four years before she died, Marianne Moore edited her own edition of her collected poems, which began with "The Steeple-Jack", a poem she wrote in her 50s. Being a fanatically scrupulous individual, severe on herself and others, she chose to leave out a great many of her own poems, and to edit down others to a tiny fraction of the length at which they were originally published. "Omissions are not accidents", states a self-chastening line in one of her poems. Grace Schulman, though a faithful friend to her in life, has now quietly overturned Miss Moore's own wishes. We can see in these pages that Miss Moore judged some of her own work too harshly, but the real illuminating lesson of this book is the way it traces how she grew into one of America's defining poetic voices.