Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was an American poet, editor, reviewer, and translator. Her poetry is an innovative mixture of common and exotic things and creatures, forthright and imaginatively playful.

Marianne Moore was one of the most interesting poets writing in English in the 20th century. It is impossible to compare her with other poets, because she was so special--a fabler whose animals remain animals, a baseball fan, and a praiser of museum rarities, office furniture, scientists, and biblical characters. Her poetry embodies precise observation and language, syllabic meter and light rhyme, the flow of cultivated American talk, and unique forms. Her experimental method, however, served traditional values, for Moore was a moralist, aware herself that she was sometimes too didactic.

Marianne Moore was born near St. Louis, Mo., on Nov. 15, 1887, in her maternal grandfather's Presbyterian parsonage. Her mother was living there with her brother, after her father's nervous breakdown...