"Imaginary blogs with real poets in them." (Sunday's Poem 13)

Poetry
by Marianne Moore
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. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. 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: the bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base- ball fan, the statistician-- nor is it valid to discriminate against "business documents and school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"--above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have it. 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, you are interested in poetry.

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I went looking for poems about baseball-- because of the Cubs thing, below, and instead, I found this poem. And I read it through to find out why it was listed under "Sports poems." Having read it, I don't think it's a sports poem at all -- does mentioning ' the baseball fan' make it a sports poem?

But, more to the point, I'm not sure, as I re-read it again, that I like the poet or the sentiment. "we do not admire what we cannot understand"? I'm not sure THAT's true. I don't understand how someone figured out how to build a computer, or launch a rocket to the moon, or take x-rays, but I admire all of those accomplishments. I admire the bee for flying even though it's not supposed to be able to do so.

Then, the poet gets snobby at the end, placing demands on what is or isn't poetry.

Also, I wondered about that quote: "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." So I googled it, and it appears that Marianne Moore came up with that line. She was quoting herself. So why the quotes? Now, reading it, I imagine Marianne Moore doing air quotes as she spoke to William Carlos Williams or something.

I am, like Moore, a poetry snob. But I think I'm a cut above her because (a) I don't presume to tell people what poetry has to be about -- I just tell people what good poetry isn't, and (b) I don't use unnecessary quotes.

That is, I don't "use" "unnecessary" "quotes."

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