So we were talking about Marianne Moore at Gail
and Frances' party last week.
And my favorite Marianne Moore poem
is "The Pangolin", which begins "another armored animal."
This one is called, "The Pangolin, with Gun".
"Another armed animal, in league with bullet-toting night
monkeys, criss-carrying Earth pigs, and Arctic
sky-eyed huskies fierce with hakapiks.
This world is rent before it's sold to us.
And Cain, with his diagonal cutting pliers,
his sledgehammer, his willingness
to speak untruth to power, Cain, that rhetorical questioner,
was not a special case.
Mark these thoughts, then meet me tonight
at the cliff tower, or at Miss Moore's, under the trapeze,
or someplace else similarly safe."
In Marianne Moore's Paris Review interview, the questioner,
I think it was Donald Hall, came in and immediately said,
'what's that over there?'
And Miss Moore, without even looking up, said,
'Oh, that's my trapeze.'