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Marianne Moore

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.

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Observations | The Dial Press, 1924
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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