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Editor's Selection of Poems
Picking and Choosing

by Marianne Moore

Literature is a phase of life: if one is afraid of it,
the situation is irremediable; if one approaches it familiarly,
what one says of it is worthless. 
The opaque allusion -- the simulated flight upward,
accomplishes nothing. Why cloud the fact
that Shaw is self-conscious in the field of sentiment 
but is otherwise rewarding? that James 
is all that has been said of him. It is not Hardy the novelist 
and Hardy the poet, but one man interpreting life as emotion. 
Gordon Craig with his "this is I" and "this is mine,"
with his three wise men, his "sad French greens" and his Chinese cherry
Gordon Craig, so inclinational and unashamed -  a critic.
Burke is a psychologist -- of acute, raccoon-like curiosity. 
Summa diligentia; to the humbug whose name is so amusing -
very young and very rushed - , Caesar crossed the Alps 
on the top of a "diligence" !
We are not daft about the meaning,
but this familiarity with wrong meaning puzzles one. 
Humming-bug, the candles are not wired for electricity. 
Small dog, going over the lawn, nipping the linen and saying 
that you have a badger - remember Xenophon;
only the most rudimentary behaviour is necessary to put us on the scent.
"A right good salvo of barks," a few strong wrinkles puckering 
the skin between the ears, is all we ask.
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