Moore and Stevens

This blog confused me more than the other ones, and that’s saying something. Poetry has always been a struggle for me so here goes nothing;

In comparing the poems, I chose “Anecdote of the Jar,” and “To A Snail,” both because they are short and they seem to have a remote similarity to one another. Both Moore and Stevens use random rhyming patterns throughout their poetry, rarely sticking to a form. This, along with their choice of topics, makes their poems very interesting.

Starting perhaps with “Anecdote of the Jar,” my first impression was that it seemed very simple due to the language and word choices, but it was complex in the message, or “anecdote” it was relaying. It gave a very complicated position to the jar, putting it in a place that few have put jars. Stevens uses some rhyming in the last stanza, rhyming “everywhere” with “bare,” but other than that, there is no direct rhyme structure. Also, I found the line “the wilderness rose up to it, /and sprawled around, no longer wild” to be very profound in the idea that the entire wilderness rose up to “meet” a simple jar.

Moving on to discuss “To a Snail” and to compare it with “Anecdote,” I found this poem most impressive because it also took something simple (a snail) and turned it into interesting poetry. I found that Moore tends to use certain words more than once, but it is in the context that she is almost having a conversation with her reader. It is in this that I found the biggest difference. The tone differences are quite significant with each poem. For example, Stevens’ poetry has a bit more of a formal feel to it, whereas the line structure and wording gives Moore an aesthetic comfortable feel.

In “Anecdote,” Stevens uses internal rhyming (“the jar was round upon the ground”) to give his poem a whimsy quality, although it doesn’t have the same light effect that Moore’s poem does. However, it makes the poem more interesting. I find the last three lines of “To a Snail” the most interesting. They are; “in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;/ “a knowledge of principles,”/ in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.” This is quite different than the way Stevens ends his poem, which says, “It did not give of bird or bush,/ like nothing else in Tennessee.” He chose to use a more abstractly worded ending, whereas Moore used previously used quotations and large words to convey a sense of importance to the snail.