A place for the genuine
by chuckofish
I have been reading about Marianne Moore, the eminent 20th century American poet, who was born in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1887. In the introduction to her Pulitzer Prize winner, Collected Poems, T.S. Eliot, another St. Louisan, said: “My conviction has remained unchanged for the last 14 years that Miss Moore’s poems form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time…”
I love this thing she said in an interview with Donald Hall for the Paris Review in 1960 when he asked her, since she and Eliot were both born in St. Louis around the same time, if their families knew each other:
No, we did not know the Eliots. We lived in Kirkwood, Missouri, where my grandfather was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. T.S. Eliot’s grandfather–Dr. William Eliot–was a Unitarian…My grandfather, like Dr. Eliot, had attended ministerial meetings in St. Louis. Also, at stated intervals, various ministers met for luncheon. After one of these luncheons my grandfather said, “When Dr. William Eliot asks the blessing and says, ‘and this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ he is Trinitarian enough for me.’
Isn’t that great?
A lifelong Presbyterian, she was also, FYI, a Republican! She’d be canceled for that today. Well, she didn’t take herself too seriously even back then.
Amen, sister.
dual personalities 
I’ll have to read some poetry!
As far as I know, I’ve never read any of her work — time to do so!
Modernist poetry isn’t really my bag, but it is fascinating to think of her coming from Kirkwood, going to Bryn Mawr, and entering that whole scene. She was a character.
It’s awesome that she was from Kirkwood!