Outstanding review by Bruce Bawer of a new biography of the poet. Read this.

In the opening pages of Charles Molesworth’s 1990 biography of Marianne Moore, the reader encounters two exceedingly curious sentences. “I have chosen,” declares Molesworth in the first of these, “to limit my interpretations of [Moore’s] character by relying more on literary than on psychological questions.” Study that statement for a moment—savor it, if you will—and ponder its meaning. What is Molesworth saying here? Apparently, that he not only thinks a biographer can somehow “interpret” his subject’s “character” while skirting “psychological questions,” but also that for some reason he has found this course of action to be advisable. Which, of course, raises the questions: Exactly how does one go about interpreting a person’s character while de-emphasizing “psychological questions”? And why? On to his next sentence: “Hence most of my evidence focuses on the external facts of Moore’s life.” What can this possibly mean, other than that Molesworth, for whatever perverse reason, has purposefully set out to produce a shallow account of his subject’s life? In any event, Molesworth more than fulfilled his goal: Reviewing his book for the Washington Post, I found it to be a staggeringly superficial effort by a writer whose unreflectiveness seemed stubborn and boundless; at the end of my review, I expressed the hope “that a more poised and penetrating study of [Moore’s] singular writings and enigmatic life will materialize before too long.”

Well, it only took twenty-three years. In Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore (the title is drawn from Moore’s famous poem “Poetry”), a professor emerita of English at Oklahoma State University, Linda Leavell, working from the very same materials that were available to Molesworth, has managed to produce a remarkably illuminating biography of a woman whose life, it turns out, was far more fascinating—and disturbing—than Molesworth ever let on.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.