Apparition of Splendor: Marianne Moore Performing Democracy through Celebrity, 19521970 [Hardcover]

While the later work of the great Modernist poet Marianne Moore was hugely popular during her final two decades, since her death critics have condemned it as trivial. This book challenges that assessment: with fresh readings of many of the late poems and of the iconic, cross-dressing public persona Moore developed to deliver them,Apparition of Splendordemonstrates that Moore used her late-life celebrity in daring and innovative ways to activate egalitarian principles that had long animated her poetry. Dressed as George Washington in cape and tricorn and writing about accessible topics like sports, TV shows, holidays, love, activism, mortality and celebrity itself, she reached a wide cross-section of Americans, encouraging them to consider what democracy means in their daily lives, particularly around issues of gender, sexuality, racial integration, class, age, and immigration. Moore actively sought out publication in popular venues (likeVogue,The New Yorker, and theSaturday Evening Post, etc.) and wrote on material chosen to directly appeal to the audiences there, influencing younger contemporaries, including poets like Ashbery, O’Hara, and Bishop, and artists like Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Ray Johnson.

Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Apparition of Splendorlooks in depth at Marianne Moore's elaborately constructed, multi-dimensional poems of her 1950s-60s celebrity phase, in which, cross-dressed as George Washington, she presented her poetry as part of a comedic performance. This biography shows how her poems challenge the highbrow hierarchy of art and invite the readers into the process of making meaning out of their daily lives.ELIZABETH GREGORY is a Taylor Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Professor of English at the University of Houston, directing the Women's Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Houston. She is thlp