Marianne Moore and syllabics

A poet who had a unique way of structuring her poems was Marianne Moore. She enjoyed writing poems in the syllabic style. Syllabic verse involves "having lines based on number of syllables rather than on rhythmical arrangement of stresses or quantities" (WordNet).

One poem in which Moore exercised the use of syllabics is Poetry. Ian Lancashire counted the number of syllables in each line of the five-stanza poem.

Stanza	Line 1	Line 2	Line 3	Line 4	Line 5	Line 6
I	19	22	11	5	8	13
II	19	21	12	5	8	13
III	19	22	[7]	8	5	14
IV	19	22	10	5	8	13
V	19	12	11	5	8	13

Here is the first stanza of Poetry, without the indentations:

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 that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

You can view the indented version here.

The words Moore used and the way she structured them reminds me of e. e. cummings. I love how she ends the first stanza with an indefinite article ("a"), how she indents the lines for effect, and how she continues "hair that can rise" with "if it must," placing the latter three words on a new line, indented.

There is a subtle delicacy to the first stanza, a harmony in which the last four lines' shortened lengths balance the first two lines' longer length. Poetry illustrates the power a poem can have when created by a poetic artisan who can so skillfully brush words upon paper, shaping them into a wondrous mix.