Response to Marianne Moore's "Poetry"

In class, someone commented that before she read Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry" she didn't like poetry, but reading it had totally changed her mind. I'm not sure that I can say the same (I've never been a big fan) but I can definitely see how the poem carries that potential, for sure. She opens it with, "I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle" which totally draws in the poetry hater--Moore starts by directly relating to the hater, saying she too dislikes it, but also draws the hater in with a gripping question, because why would a poet hate poetry? Curiosity gets the better of us, and Moore knows it.

She then explains, step by step, elegantly, yet still on more or less simple and relatable terms, why she also loves it. She explains, through poetry, why poetry is in fact important--highlighting that it can be, if done well, and with heart, "useful." "Useful" for helping us experience the powerful feelings and emotions which we have the potential for, that poetry is to some degree "a place for the genuine," where (to paraphrase) hands can really grasp, eyes can freely dilate, and hair can rise--and that these experiences, "these things are important." Moore opens the eyes of the reader, and in just over twenty-five lines of poetry convinces you of its fundamental nature and purpose.

__“In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

__the raw material of poetry in

____all its rawness and

____that which is on the other hand

_genuine, then you are interested in poetry.”