Marianne Moore

Here you will find thePoemThe Past is the Presentof poet Marianne Moore

The Past is the Present

If external action is effete and rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said - and I think I repeat his exact words - "Hebrew poetry is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords the occasion and expediency determines the form.