Poetry (by Moore) Themes

The speaker lets readers know that she's been in our shoes. She knows what it's like to be frustrated by poetry. We generally think of a poem's speaker as being similar to the poet's voice, but her...

As we discuss in the "Speaker" section, the speaker is most likely someone who knows and thinks a lot about poetry. This doesn't mean, though, that she embraces poetry wholeheartedly. She knows tha...

The poem has a unique publishing history, due to Moore's many revisions. (See "In a Nutshell" for more on this.) Within the poem itself, the possibility of transformation or change is also a crucia...

This theme is pretty self-evident, but we might want to take a moment to consider what exactly the speaker's attitude toward poetry is. When we first look at the title, we might think, "A poem abou...