Marianne Moore

One interesting thing about studying for my comps and being forced to read huge chunks of literature that I haven't read since I was in college is discovering how my views have changed.

For example, I used to love those early HD imagist poems. Now they strike me as kitsch.

I used to not be so into Marianne Moore, but now she strikes me as brilliant - the constant breaking down and realligning the binary between artificiality and the natural/real.

I love how it becomes impossible to tell when she's quoting a source or not, and the way the quotes function not as references but in new ways within the conext of the poem.

I love animals turning into decorations - over and over and over. Often within a single line-break ("An octopus/of ice" for example).

The lack of action verbs - it's all "has" and "is". No "vortex" here, but texture after texture after texture.