In the Public Garden by Marianne Moore
“In the Public Garden” is a poem by Marianne Moore, presented at the 1958 Boston Arts Festival, where she engaged a large audience by exploring the relationship between art, individuality, and public life. The poem opens with a contemplation of duality, as Moore juxtaposes the collective experience of a festival with the individual insights of a taxicab driver. Through a seasonal journey from summer to winter, she highlights nature's beauty while subverting expectations by presenting winter in a vibrant light.
Moore delves into themes of gratitude and the reciprocal nature of art and audience, suggesting that both the artist and the audience engage in an exchange of freedom and self-discipline. The poem includes reflections on silence as a precious form of freedom and cites President Eisenhower to emphasize the paradox of labor and liberty. Moore's stylistic approach in this piece features a mix of syllabic verse, varied stanza lengths, and innovative rhyme schemes, which resonate with the celebratory theme of artistic expression. Overall, the poem captures Moore's signature exploration of personal themes within public contexts, making it a notable work that exemplifies her later poetry.
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In the Public Garden by Marianne Moore
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1958 (collected in The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore, 1967, 1981)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Moore wrote “In the Public Garden” for the 1958 Boston Arts Festival, where she read the poem to an audience of five thousand people. In it, she considers art both in its public function and as an expression of individuality. To emphasize the importance of artistic freedom, she arranges her ideas in a series of paradoxes.
The first stanza introduces the duality. The festival “for all” takes place near Harvard University, which has made “education individual.” Moore considers one individual, an “almost scriptural” taxicab driver who drove her to Cambridge. He wisely remarks: “They/ make some fine young men at Harvard.” This comment suggests the beauties of the landscape, but Moore disrupts the reader’s expectation by going backward from summer to spring to winter. She notes the weathervane with gold ball glittering atop Boston’s Faneuil Hall in summer. Spring brings pear blossoms, pin-oak leaves, and iris. Winter, instead of death or hibernation, exhibits snowdrops “that smell like/ violets.”
Moore next moves inside King’s Chapel to contemplate gratitude. She quotes a traditional southern hymn about work as praise of God. A chapel and a festival are alike; they both involve an exchange. The festival-goer expects to get art or inspiration in exchange for pay or attention. Instead, Moore cites some unexpected givings: black sturgeon eggs, a camel, and, even more unusual, silence. Silence is as precious as freedom. This comment leads to another unexpected statement, that freedom is for “self-discipline.” In the next lines, Moore explores this paradox. She cites a quotation from President Dwight Eisenhower, who remarked that schools are for the “freedom to toil.” She mentions the determination of prison inmates to gain their freedom by selling medicinal herbs, a strategy that would backfire if they themselves became ill.
At this point, Moore interrupts to return to the occasion at which she is speaking. She is grateful because the audience is there “to wish poetry well” by the fact of their attendance. She is grateful for religious, intellectual, and artistic freedom. She ends with that sentiment, now capitalizing “Art.” Even though it is “admired in general,” Art is “always actually personal.” This is the exchange mentioned earlier. The artist, in exchange for self-discipline, receives silence, the absence of restraints. The public enjoys the freedom to hear the highly personal voice of the artist.
This poem typifies some of Moore’s later works. She addresses the occasion, but she also continues to explore personal themes. The paradox of freedom as discipline is a central concern. She also refines stylistic devices. The syllabic verse is less exacting in the number of syllables per line than in her earlier poetry. She uses run-on lines but varies the regular five-line stanza by interjecting a three-line stanza at the point she addresses the occasion directly. Moore also employs an interesting rhyming device. She uses forty variations on a single rhyme, the “-al” found in “personal” and “festival.” Perhaps she meant to suggest a pealing of bells appropriate to a celebration of artistic freedom. In varying her expected style to explore the truth of the paradox, she illustrates concretely what she went to Boston to say.
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.