Abstract
Gilbert explores Moore’s distinctive method of adducing and gathering representative items while respecting their eccentric particularity. He takes the poet’s frequent use of the phrase “these things” as a marker for this characteristic balance between specificity and generality. Examining a series of poems in which Moore juxtaposes objects and instances without dissolving them into fixed categories, Gilbert argues that the poet tends to derive meaning from collections of things whose internal variety is precisely the source of their ideational power. Yet he distinguishes her procedures from more disjunctive modes of modernist assemblage, finding that discursive logic ultimately frames and authorizes her concatenations.
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Gilbert, R. (2018). “These Things”: Moore’s Habits of Adduction. In: Gregory, E., Hubbard, S. (eds) Twenty-First Century Marianne Moore. Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65109-5_3
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