Life & Wisdom Quote by Marianne Moore

Austere on the surface, Marianne Moore's line is a small manifesto disguised as grammar. "Poetry is all nouns and verbs" reads like a classroom simplification, then snaps into something sharper: a refusal of the decorative. Nouns and verbs are the load-bearing parts of a sentence, the things and the doings. By defining poetry this way, Moore quietly demotes the fog-machine language that can make verse feel like scented air - too many adjectives, too much mood, not enough world.

The intent isn't to deny music or metaphor; it's to insist they be earned. Moore came up in a modernist moment that distrusted Victorian plushness and prized precision, often under the banner of "no ideas but in things". Her own poems are famous for their exacting observation and their clipped, engineered surfaces. Calling poetry "all nouns and verbs" aligns craft with attention: name what you see, record what happens, let meaning arise from contact with reality rather than from rhetorical perfume.

There's subtext, too, about moral seriousness. Nouns and verbs imply accountability: if you must pick the right name and the right action, you can't hide behind vibes. It's also a sly flex from a poet who knew how much power lives in restraint. Moore isn't narrowing poetry; she's tightening the screws so the room can hold pressure. When language is forced to rely on essentials, every choice becomes a decision - and every decision becomes style.