Small Archive with Photograph & 2 ALS to an Ardent Admirer
The Archive includes: A 4 1/4” x 6” framed photograph of the poet showcased between an October 7, 1957 TLS and a December 1, 1956 ALS on Marianne Moore’s personal note cards. A 6” x 8” framed February 9, 1957 ALS to the admirer including a hand-addressed envelope on MM’s personal stationery. In November 1956 the admirer’s friend attended a poetry reading, forgetting to bring “Like a Bulwark” for MM to inscribe. Afterwards he wrote to her to ask if he could send the book for her to inscribe. Her modest December 1 ALS in reply includes ‘… it is a compliment that the book seems worth giving and worth having signed. (It also needs correcting)’… I wondered if the evening really seemed worth something…’ Her long February 9, 1957 ALS (in reply to the admirer’s ‘thank you’) reveals a gracious, modest and sensitive soul; “… You helped me to think better of my lines than I naturally tend to; I sympathize with the boys who complained of the hard words and the effeminacy and over-refined jargon of poetry. (An illiterate person is sometimes such a treat… “…Like you, I am all for women hoping that the best traits of men and women can be combined in them and the best traits of women and of men can be combined in men; I have just been reading Miss Katharine McBride’s (President’s) Bryn Mawr Annual Report and am really happy that a woman in authority can be so quiet efficient and forceful, - and also be possessed of delicacy and charm...” The Collection includes a copy of “Like a Bulwark” inscribed by MM on the ffep (with the poet’s promised manuscript corrections): “For (the admirer)/From (the friend)/[To have two readers so kind and/magnanimous, is surely an encouragement*/to Marianne Moore’/*Yes; and so very considerate!]/December 4, 1956” Laid into the book is the friend’s presentation note and another short autograph note from MM. Also included is a copy of “The Arctic Ox” (review tipped to the ffep); laid in are several MM related items including a 1/26/97 NYT ‘Art View’ article “Thoroughly Modern in More than Her Poetry” and the 11/11/13 The New Yorker retrospective article on the publication of Linda Leavell’s biography of MM “Holding On Upside Down.” Marianne Moore was an active participant in the American suffrage movement beginning in her days at Bryn Mawr (1905-09). Her poetry drew high praise from luminary poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stephens and T.S. Eliot (who wrote ‘… Miss Moore’s poems form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time’). In 1952 Marianne Moore became the first women to win the National Book Award for Poetry (it would be eighteen years before a woman was again so honored) as well as the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes. Item #21254
Price: $950.00