Briefer Mentions and Lyrical Lexicons: Marianne Moore’s Responses to Dictionaries in The Dial and Observations

Abstract

1925 was an important year for the poet and editor Marianne Moore. First, she began assuming editorial responsibility for the American literary magazine The Dial, taking over from her predecessor Scofield Thayer. Second, she saw her collection Observations published, with the first edition selling out within a month. Moore’s interest in dictionaries at this time displays some intriguing overlaps between her critical and creative lives, still an underexplored area within Moore studies. Therefore, this chapter discusses Moore’s early reviews of a range of reference works, before turning its attention to Moore’s poems ‘Injudicious Gardening’ and ‘Marriage’, to demonstrate how Moore’s preoccupation with questions of definition becomes altogether more subversive, and revealing of her capricious attitude towards the notion of ‘definition’ itself.