Chapter 27 - Marianne Moore and the Printed Page

Summary

In many ways, the world of print that Marianne Moore and her modernist peers entered offered an embarrassment of riches when it came to publishing. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American middle class remained a reading market lost between the relatively expensive and high-toned book magazines aimed at America's educated elite and the lowbrow penny story papers pitched at the working classes. The increasing status of art as commodity and publishing as big business meant that both American artists and the venues that printed them needed to think harder than ever before about the audiences they wished to attract. The choice of book publisher had just as many consequences for a poet's career as the choice of periodical venues when it came to coding a poet's work for consumption. Moore lumps the new Americans together with the ancient imperial Romans and Egyptians.