Advertising Moore

Abstract

For more than thirty years, Linda Leavell has been trying to bring readers to Marianne Moore, to accomplish what Moore called “advertising”—etymologically, turning attention toward something. She provides in this chapter an overview of her career. Leavell’s first book focused on the modernism of visual artists in New York as a context for the formation of Moore’s aesthetic. Leavell discovered in this project Moore’s philosophical grounding in pragmatism and particularly her passion for precision and individualism. Leavell’s second book, Holding On Upside Down, dispels myths about Moore’s personal life to show a real woman behind the famously impersonal poetry. Both in this biography and in the reissue of Observations (2016) that she edited, Leavell has sought to broaden Moore’s audience.