Major Poet, Minor Verse

O TO BE A DRAGON (37 pp.)--Marianne Moore--Viking ($2.75).

A critic once asked a lady what was the best way of "reaching" Marianne Moore. He was speaking of her poetry, but this was the deadpan reply: "Take the Sixth Avenue Independent Subway at 47th Street, the D train to Borough

Hall-Jay Street stop in Brooklyn; cross the platform to take the A express train, get off at the second stop, Lafayette--the front of the train lets you off nearest Cumberland Street; Miss Moore lives on Cumberland, No. 260, which is between Lafayette and De Kalb; it is a six-story, yellow brick building; she lives in Apartment 18 on the fifth floor."

That is one way to reach Marianne Moore. She lives there between Lafayette and De Kalb still, as she has for 30 years, and from those unlikely surroundings have come some of the best U.S. poetry written during that time. Reaching the heart of her poetry itself is another matter. Her poetry is practical and fresh, delicate and forthright, intensely imaginative and keenly observant. To try to reach it, the Collected Poems are the best road. Her new book, so slender that it can be read in an hour, is a simple, narrow, carefree path that proves in a whimsical way that Poet Moore walks through a verseland entirely of her own making.

The title poem quite simply states the deepest wish of a famed lady of 71:

// /, like Solomon, . . . could have my wish--my wish . . . 0 to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven--of

silkworm size or immense; at times invisible.

Felicitous phenomenon!

Her contemporary, T. S. Eliot, has said that her work is "part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time." But what fine poet other than Marianne Moore would dare conduct a love affair with the "Brooklyn'' (not the Los Angeles--no, never) Dodgers in verse?

As for Gil Hodges, in custody of first--"He'll do it by himself." Now a specialist versed

in an extension reach far into the box

seats--he lengthens up, he leans, and gloving the

ball defeats

expectation by a whisker. The modest

star, irked by one mis play, is no hero by a hair;

in a strikeout slaughter when what could

matter more, he lines a homer to the signboard and

has changed the score.

0 to Be a Dragon only suggests the measure of Poet Moore's true worth. She is mostly having fun, and so will most readers who admire a deft use of language, a faultless grip on verse technique, an underlying love for living things, in such playful lines as:

To wear the arctic fox you have to kill it. Wear qiviut--the underwool of the arctic ox--pulled off it like a sweater,' your coat is warm; your conscience, better.

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