Multi-dimensional Authenticity and Apology for Modernist Poetry: Marianne Moore's "Poetry"

American poet Marianne Moore, in her three-line version "Poetry", succinctly imparts to readers that authenticity is the redemption of modern poetry, while she defines poetry by defining authenticity in her full version of this poem. In the modernist context, Moore's authenticity is a multi-dimensional concept, manifesting itself in five aspects. Firstly, authenticity takes as its core genuine emotional experience. Secondly, it turns outward to the present, particularized and local reality. Thirdly, it means poets should take imagination as media and hub, processing the inner and outer material to formulate a virtual and genuine world. Forth, authenticity requires that poets express and present things in themselves concisely and succinctly. Lastly, it asks readers to abandon the traditional, romantic mode of sympathetic reading, replacing it instead with contemptuous attitude and objective, scientific mode of reading for embedded feelings and emotions. "Poetry" is less a definition of poetry per se than an apology for Moore's own poetry and authenticity, and for modernist poetry as a whole.