“Words Cluster like Chromosomes”: Marianne Moore and Poetic-Genetic Origination
Celine Shanosky
Abstract:In 1963, Marianne Moore tells an interviewer, “I never ‘plan’ a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.” Six decades earlier, when Moore first learned about chromosomes, the concept was relatively new. Her education at Bryn Mawr from 1905 to 1909 placed her at the forefront of the understanding of heredity for her time, among those who knew that embryos inherited chromosomes equally from each parent. As her early poetry placed embryonic origins in tension with religious, national, an… Show more
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