Hi Robert,

I, too, favor the 1924 version of the poem. While reading it this morning, I kept circling back to the first stanza, where Moore works very hard, I think, to set the stage for the beautiful meandering catalogues that both extend and refine the poem's rhetoric. Especially the first three lines:

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.

Those four uses of "it," create a kind of vacuum of meaning that must be filled, an energy that must be shaped even while Moore deconstructs (or undercuts) any generalizing or reductive ideas she (or we) might have about poetry. The stakes are extremely high from the very beginning.

I suppose this is one of the reasons why I like the 1924 version so much. It's brings me a great deal of pleasure to watch her rise to the challenge staked out in those first three lines. The revised version is charming and evocative, but it's not as daring.

(Thanks for continuing this project on SLATE, Robert. I haven't had time to participate lately, but I always read with great interest the poems and posts!)

Best wishes,
David

David, welcome.

When you write, " Moore deconstructs (or undercuts) any generalizing or reductive ideas she (or we) might have" you identify just the quality I mean when I put "irritable" next to "attentive" in the last sentence of the introduction.

The feeling is that her intensity of regard gets some of its almost manic energy from her scorn for blurry or easy perceptions by herself, or her reader, or anyone. Anticipating the trite or facile, a scrupulous dread of cliche, enriches her kind of consideration.

The "revised version" (sounds kind of Biblical!) has for me, along with its charm, another kind of "irritable"-ness: not sure I know how to prove this, but when she puts the three-liner forward but includes the fuller version in her Notes, I hear something like a testy (but polte) "is this what you want?" . . . this too, addressed to herself as well as to us.

DRoderick, after reading your comments, I Googled your name and eventually discovered several poems from your book Blue Colonial that I like very much. In fact, the search reminded me that I had enjoyed the title poem when it appeared on Verse Daily some time ago.

I think my enjoyment today was heightened by the recent PBS series on American Indians, especially the first episode, which focused on the same Thanksgiving meal that your "Thanksgiving 1621" does. I've also been thinking lately about the poem "The Story of Joshua" by Alicia Ostriker, which suggests that the Puritans saw the Biblical Joshua's takeover of Canaan as justification for their own takeover of the Indians' land.

Hi DR:Re: While reading it this morning, I kept circling back to the first stanza

Me too.

In broad daylight

Cream pie in the sky

“Must ‘a been something, I said,

Could ‘a been the moon”

Highly relevant music link.

Hi, Mr. Pinksy, there is no fun without you.

<link>

Hi Robert,

Regarding the shorter (revised) version, I see this different source of irritation, which I think Robert Thomas, Mary Ann, and especially Frederick are starting to discuss over in the "imaginary toads" thread. Fascinating, really, how she manages to validate both versions of the poem by printing the earlier version in the index of her Collected.

Years ago, when I was a less developed reader of poetry, this strategy would have irritated me to the point of frustration. But now I find it charming, even comical. If it's not an joke, it's at least a wink to the reader. Why NOT have it both ways if you can get away with it?

Here's another question for you, Robert. Can you think of any comparable examples of this kind of thing... with a poet standing behind two published versions of a poem? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I've been lingering on this all day and I haven't produced one high-profile example.

Hi there, Mary Ann. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful words. They mean a lot to me.

I haven't read the Ostriker poem you mentioned, but I'm going to look it up. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Best wishes,
David

To answer David Roderick's question, I can't quite think of a poet having two (or more) versions of a poem presented quite this way. (Songwriters and musicians and comics do it all the time, of course. And technology brings us all sorts of director's cuts of movies.) Lots of editing differences in poems from earlier centuries of course.

The closest I can think of right now is Landor translating some of his own Latin poems into English twice, quite differently. But he was getting quite old, as I recall, and seems to have forgotten the first versions. Wordsworth, Whitman, many others did revisions that some readers like, others don't.

A contemporary of mine (I won't identify the poet), when giving poetry readings, sometimes makes little on-the-spot revisions to suit a particular audience. But that's different.

And Moore, characteristically, doesn't qute acknowledge that she is having the poem two ways.

Hap, thanks-- I am in here plugging.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion, Robert. I couldn't come up with any other poet examples either. I was able to assemble a mental list of a directors... and hip-hop artists, who, back in the 80s and 90s, often released several remixes of their songs. (I bought a lot of 'em, of course.)

Including both versions of “Poetry” in a single book strikes me as a nod to jazz and the value placed on alternate takes. It makes me wonder why “we” (poets in general, even those explicitly influenced by jazz) seem to feel a greater need to settle on a single, “authoritative” version?

It makes me wonder why “we” (poets in general, even those explicitly influenced by jazz) seem to feel a greater need to settle on a single, “authoritative” version?

All the more reason, I guess, why it's important to get out your own Complete Poems before you die rather than leaving the task to others.