ABSTRACT
In the large-scale montage poems and the poetic miniatures Moore published between 1923 and 1925 Moore took the art of collecting textual extracts and fragments to its logical conclusion raising questions concerning the categories separating art from everyday life and in doing so, she tested the modernist faith in art. In 'Marriage' Moore develops a formal method designed to enact a feminist resistance to the singular, authenticating belief systems that privilege the one over the many while in 'An Octopus' she tests out a form of flexible faith capable of yielding to the multiplicity of experience. 'Marriage' counters the singular and dominating voice of Adam with a proliferation of extra-textual sources producing a cacophony of voices that destabilizes poetic 'union'. Moore's poetic observation of the Nisqually glacier, as 'an octopus of ice' mimics Turner's ability to perceive the landscape as constantly changing, organic body. Moore's response to modernity itself is also implied in this poem in subtle and artful ways.
