A Carriage from Sweden by Marianne Moore

First published: 1944, in Nevertheless

Type of poem: Lyric

The Poem

“A Carriage from Sweden” by Marianne Moore is a sixty-line poem of twelve five-line stanzas celebrating the beauty of a Swedish country cart as well as the virtues of the nation in which it was made. The poet’s words raise a utilitarian folk artifact into a museum masterpiece. Thus the poem is an example of ekphrasis (Greek for “to speak out”), the verbal representation of a visual work of art, as a painting or sculpture. Its technique of alternating description and interpretation can be compared with the pure ekphrasis of John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the art object exists solely and wholly in words, and with W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” which uses several paintings but centers finally upon Pieter Bruegel, the Elder’s “Landscape with Fall of Icarus.” Had not the Swedish carriage been sold from the Brooklyn museum where Moore first saw it, and subsequently lost, a photograph of it could accompany the poem for comparison.

Ekphrastic poetry involves the remaking of a made thing. Imagery is largely visual as the reader is invited to see the art object from different perspectives. The object is not only described but also interpreted for the reader, who should be alert for the movement from one sort of rhetoric to the other. Even acts of description become interpretation, however, for the poet’s selectivity sets thematic priorities. The poet may emphasize, exaggerate, distort, or even omit details of the art object. In the case of the carriage from Sweden, the vehicle made in words by a Brooklyn poet is every bit as impressive as the wooden vehicle made in Scandinavia. Indeed, Moore’s theme is the integrity of well-made things, whether carts or arts. Behind every line of the poem (Greek for poema, “created thing”) lies the notion of the poet (Greek for poietes, “maker”) as creator, maker of a made thing, as well as the forces that make it poetic (Greek for poietikos, “inventive, ingenious”).

Forms and Devices

Although Moore’s poem is unmetered, that is, without any particular rhythm, it is structured with syllabics and intricate rhyme. As the maker of the Swedish cart may have drawn a plan of what he or she was about to make, so Moore worked according to an elaborate blueprint of syllable count and rhymes. First, she decided to make twelve five-line stanzas. Lines 1, 2, 3, and 5 have eight syllables each. Line 4 in all stanzas but the last has nine syllables, and even in the final stanza it may have nine if one assumes two silent syllables, like the dramatic pause at the end of a symphony before its conclusion.

In every stanza, the second and third lines end with full or exact rhymes or, occasionally, slant rhymes, as in stanzas 2 and 3. Rhyme in these lines is more noticeable than rhyme in other lines. The longer, nine-syllable lines remain unrhymed. The first rhyme of each stanza contains internal rhyme of the third syllable with the last, as in “there/air” (line 1), “resined/wind” (line 11), and “vertical/all” (line 31). These might also be full or exact rhymes and slant rhymes. The last line of each stanza rhymes its first syllable with its last. These might be sight rhyme, as “something/home” in line 5; slant rhyme, as “integrity/vein” in line 10; or full, exact rhyme, as “Adolphus/decay” in line 15. These demanding constraints and intricate patterns mimic the elaborate designs of the cart which serve to raise it from being merely utilitarian to being an art object worthy of the muses themselves.

Bibliography

Costello, Bonnie. Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Hadas, Pamela White. Marianne Moore: Poet of Affection. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1977.

Joyce, Elisabeth W. Cultural Critique and Abstraction: Marianne Moore and the Avant-Garde. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998.

Miller, Christine. Marianne Moore: Questions of Authority. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Molesworth, Charles. Marianne Moore: A Literary Life. New York: Atheneum, 1990.

Stamy, Cynthia. Marianne Moore and China: Orientalism and a Writing of America. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Stapleton, Laurence. Marianne Moore: The Poet’s Advance. 1978. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Tomlinson, Charles, ed. Marianne Moore: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Willis, Patricia C., ed. Marianne Moore. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1999.