Marianne Moore loved the Brooklyn Dodgers

And that is how I'm connecting her to Brooklyn. Her bio on Poets.org doesn't mention this long-standing love affair, but it is true. She even threw out the first ball of the season one year. She also wrote a celebratory poem, entitled "Hometown Piece for Messrs. Alston and Reese," for the Dodgers after their 1956 National League Title win. "Poetry" is her most familiar poem, probably because teachers of poetry use it as an introduction to class fairly often. The first line catches student interest because it is the opposite of what they expect. That, of course, gets them to read more than the first and last stanza...some of the time.

To read "Poetry" by Marianne Moore in its entirety, click here. This excerpt is the first stanza and the beginning of the second stanza. I tried to get the spacing correct in my re-typing of it. Of course, I used tab and not a specific number of taps on my space bar, so who knows how accurate it has turned out to be. Enjoy.

from "Poetry"

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but
because they are
useful.