"A Graveyard" by Marianne Moore

A Graveyard
BY M AR IANN E MOO RE

Man, looking into the sea—

taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have it to
yourself—
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing
but you cannot stand in the middle of this:
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession—each with an emerald turkey-foot at the top—
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look—
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them
for their bones have not lasted;
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away—the blades of the oars
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such thing as
death.
The wrinkles progress upon themselves in a phalanx—beautiful under networks
of foam,
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed;
the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls as heretofore—
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion beneath them
and the ocean, under the pulsation of light-houses and noise of bell-buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things
are bound to sink—
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
Connection of the Poem to the Modernist Era

 In the poem "A Graveyard" by Marianne Moore, the author describes how the
ocean is a graveyard through her use of imagery and metaphors.
 She describes the ocean as an "excavated grave".
 The sea is described as sinking anything that is tossed into it.
 Struggling against it will not help.
 People go into the sea oblivious to the imminent death.
 Even though it appears calm it is treacherous.
 The sea is compared to how people are helpless in life.

 Modernism is a self conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse.
Marianne was an expert at this and showed off her skills in "A Graveyard".
Written in 1924, the poem was a modernist masterpiece about the opaqueness
and translucency of the sea, or the hardships of the man. She stresses making
herself the speaker even though it should be the man looking. It is thought that
this was written out of a personal crisis.

A Grave
The poet is looking at the sea when a man blocks her view. It is "human nature to stand in the
middle of things," but it is impossible to stand in the middle of the sea. Unlike the stately line of
quiet firs she sees, the sea is “a collector,” and will return one’s greedy look. Men who once had
that look are now just bones, but others still blithely lower their nets and row away, not knowing
that they are “desecrating a grave.”

The poet observes the wrinkles on the foam of the waves, the undulation of the water, and the
gulls and tortoises. She concludes by saying that the ocean flows on as if it were not a place in
which dropped things sank or twisted and turned without “volition [or] consequence.”

Summary
A man is standing and looking at the sea, blocking the poet’s view. It is only
human nature to stand in the middle of things, but the sea cannot be stood in the
middle of; it is just a grave.

The fir trees stand in a procession, reserved and repressed. They are unlike the
sea, which is a “collector,” and will always return a greedy look.
Others have worn that same greedy look, but they have since been worn away to
bones; even the fish no longer care to investigate them. Men continue to lower
their nets in the sea, but do not understand that they are “desecrating a grave.”
They confidently row away, the blades of their oars seeming to ignore the fact of
death.

Wrinkles along the edges of the foamy waves reveal themselves; the sea moves in
and out of the seaweed. Birds fly and call, a tortoise climbs on the rocks at the
bottom of the cliff. The ocean flows like usual, obscuring the fact that it is a place
in which “dropped things are bound to sink” and twist and turn with neither
“volition nor / consciousness.”

Analysis

“A Grave” is one of Moore’s early works, with versions of the poem dating back to
1916. The final poem was published in Poems (1921) and Observations (1924). It
is one of her many poems that deals with the sea, but it is perhaps the only one
rooted in an actual moment in her life. She and her mother were at the beach and
a man moved in front of them, blocking their view of the ocean. When Moore
said something, her mother commented that it is human nature to stand in the
middle of things.

That sentiment opens the poem; the poet says that man takes the view of the sea
for himself, but others have a right to it as well. She acknowledges that it is
human nature to try to "get in the middle of things," and thus hog the capacity to
view for oneself; but instead of then turning her attention to the beauty of the
sea as we might expect her to do, she says bluntly that it is “a well excavated
grave.” She uses the word again when discussing the men who dip their nets into
the sea and then row away, saying that they are unaware that they are
“desecrating a grave.” The sea is also a “collector,” which Moore follows up with
an image of indifferent fish swimming around the bones of those who have met
their watery death. The sea has a “rapacious look,” and, in the last stanza, is a
place where things sink or twist and turn in the current. These disconcerting
images are contrasted with the lovelier, luminous images of the wrinkles on top of
foamy waves and birds and tortoises cawing and clambering; along with the
familiar noises of lighthouses and bell buoys, readers are lulled into placid and
pleasurable contemplation of the sea before Moore reminds them of the sea’s
murderous intent.

Critics have focused on Moore’s vision and perception; indeed, the poem does
have a particular way of getting to the sea, and one that stops well short of
actually describing it. Nancy Sullivan explains that perspective is the “aspect of
the poetic process that touches not merely on the writing of a poem but on that
delicate transference from poet to person.” In terms of “A Grave,” Moore begins
by stating essentially that what a man thinks he can do and what he actually can
do are different. Man misunderstands time and space, which is reinforced by the
poet’s moving from the edge of the sea (like the edge of a grave) to a stately line
of firs. It is clear that the “you” Moore is talking to would not be seeing the exact
same thing as she does; as Sullivan writes, “here the poet asserts what the
philosopher has suggested: neither life nor reality are forever. Each point of view
of any aspect of the world differs from individual to individual.” What to do about
this, then? One must acknowledge that there is no archetypal seascape and each
person’s vision is valuable. Moore’s description of the tops of the trees as turkey
feet is not less vivid for its idiosyncrasy. All associations and images evoked in the
poet’s mind are valid.

Sullivan writes that the poem ends on a note of suspense, “nibbling around the
edges of a more liberated concept of space in the context of a fairly orthodox
view of time and place.”
Similarly, A.K. Weatherhed contrasts the “bird’s-eye-view” and the “close-up
view” of much of Moore’s poetry. The views play off each other, but ultimately
Moore suggests that the bird’s-eye-view is more prone to being misleading and
sentimentalizing things while the close-up-view is more accurate and conducive
to understanding the truth of things. The man in “A Grave” attempts to have a
bird’s-eye-view, lording over the sea and blocking the view of others. In contrast,
Moore turns her poetic vision to minute details like the “the wrinkles *that+
progress among themselves in a phalanx” or the tops of the fir trees “each with
an emerald turkey / foot at the top.”

Moore’s vantage point behind the man means that she literally cannot see the
sea, but she knows that as a poet she cannot fully “see” it anyway. The sea is
sublime: it can never be completely grasped or accurately described, and as
mentioned before, one person sees something and another person sees
something else. Moore chooses to, as critic Jeanne Heuving notes, “emphasize
*the sea’s+ opacity over its translucency over its symbolic meanings.” The tops of
the waves, the animals, the buoys and lighthouses are synecdochal details that
act as entry-points to the boundlessness of the sea. At the end of the poem
Moore chooses to remain literal in her conception of the sea and death rather
than falling prey to the Romantic tendency to try to control nature or learn
something profound about oneself through contemplation of it.

Finally, “A Grave” is notable for its evocation, however subtle, of a female poet’s
frustration with the male dominance of her field. Critic Jeredith Merrin begins by
looking at her early versions of the poem, which more closely resembled male
Romantic poetic voices. Over time, though, Moore revised her work and shed the
superfluities. In her correspondence with Ezra Pound about the revised work she
displays some “female anxiety” but “also displays remarkable independence and
self-assurance,” Merrin discerns. Moore appreciates Pound’s insights, but
ultimately refuses to change the order of the last words “volition and
consciousness.”
The very first word of the poem—”Man”—can be read as one man or mankind in
general. Either way, Man is not Woman; here, he blocks the female poet's view,
literally and metaphorically. He is blithely ignorant and his fate is to be one of the
drowned men whose bones the fish are no longer interested in. He is just one of
the “dropped things” and is ultimately disempowered. Merrin notes that Moore’s
sea is not only a grave but is also “Nature’s and Woman’s ally.” This can be seen in
the imagery and the language, as there is heavy sibilance in the poem;
“consciousness” is the final hiss at Man.

Merrin notes (quoting another scholar, Margaret Homans) that the Romantic
period was all about the self, and the “other” was always represented as female
whether it was nature, a human woman, or some other desired thing. Moore’s
finished “A Grave” is a “continuation of *the Romantic+ tradition and a devastating
commentary on it.” She takes the tropes of Romantic poetry like consciousness
and unconsciousness, willfulness and will-lessness, and redistributes them among
Man, Woman, Nature, and Poet. Moore’s sea has a “fresh air of irrepressible
‘otherness’” due to the poet's employment of metaphor to “expose the pathetic
fallaciousness of the Romantic poet’s pretension.”

A Grave Character List

The Man
The man blocks the speaker's view of the sea; according to the speaker, he is trying to stand "in
the middle of it," whether that's the sea or the "scene" itself. He seems blithely ignorant of those
around him; this is a human failing, but it is also, perhaps, an indictment of men, in particular,
who are content in undisputed social power.
The Sea
The sea is depicted as a violent, "rapacious" collector of the dead. It may be unfathomably lovely
and pulse with life, but it is tempestuous, and a threat to the naive men who fish its depths and
stand on its shores.
The speaker
Moore is the speaker, first annoyed at the imposing presence of the man and then contemplative
regarding her own, and more broadly the human, relationship with the sea.
A Grave Symbols, Allegory and Motifs
The Sea (symbol)
The sea is a potent symbol of death and of the general power of nature. First, it symbolizes death
because it is violently powerful and blithely indifferent to the men who seek its riches and its
secrets. It is a grave, a tomb. Second, it symbolizes the power of nature overall because, again, it
cares nothing for man and does what it always does regardless of human preference or
intervention.

Sea Creatures (motif)

There are several sea creatures described: the fish, the birds, the tortoise, and the water spiders.
All of these creatures are the true inhabitants of the sea, and will likely endure long after the last
man dips his nets and rows away. Their movement is organic, free; they do not presume to "stand
in the middle of a thing." They thus contrast with the arrogant man/men.

A Grave Themes
Seeing
"A Grave" is all about the act of seeing: words like "looking," "view," "look," recur
frequently. The speaker is looking at someone else looking at the sea; the sea looks back at
everyone. Moore plays with our understanding of looking vs. knowing, suggesting that the man
blocking her view looks and thinks he knows, but that she has a more nuanced understanding of
the sea because she knows that looking at it cannot begin to encompass its truth. She also
suggests that one can look at small things—waves, birds, tortoise shells—to get a glimpse of the
larger thing.
The Sea
The sea defies our understanding; it is opaque and mysterious, a place of death as well as life.
Whereas some men think they grasp its essence, Moore knows better. She does not presume to
think she can exercise power over it, preferring to contemplate its particulars and acknowledge
its sublimity. The sea is depicted as indifferent to man, as a place where things "turn and twist"
without "volition [or] / consciousness." It is beautiful, yes, but that beauty is "rapacious" and
leads men to underestimate the sea's nature as "that ocean in which / dropped things are bound to
sink."
Men
The one man that stands in front of Moore on the shore, thus blocking her view, can be viewed
as representative of all men. After all, Moore later writes, "men lower nets, unconscious of the
fact that they are / desecrating a grave." These men are depicted as blithely unaware of their
insignificance in the face of nature, callous and arrogant, and privy to erroneous assumptions
regarding their own power. This position contrasts implicitly with Moore's own as a passive
viewer; but this passivity is the essence of her poetic vision, allowing her to be thoughtful and
perspicacious about her relationship to the sea.

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The poet (Moore)
Form and Meter
Free verse

Metaphors and Similes

Simile:
-"the blades of the oars / moving together like the feet of water spiders"
Metaphor:
-the grave is, clearly, a metaphor for the sea. A grave is a dark, deep place for
the dead; it is claustrophobic, closed. It connotes fear, horror,
incomprehensibility. Describing the sea as a grave, then, gives it the same
characteristics and allows us to ruminate on its unfathomable depths.
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration:
-"the tortoise shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs"
Irony
-It is ironic that the man, so confident in his physicality and consciousness, is
blithely unaware of the true nature of the sea. He stares at it if he understands
it, not knowing that "there are others besides you who have worn that look,"
and are now mere bones.
Genre
Poetry
Setting
The beach
Tone
annoyed; sardonic; meditative
Protagonist and Antagonist
Pro: Moore, the sea Ant: ignorant humans (men)
Major Conflict
If man will realize the truth regarding the sea's power over and utter disregard
towards him.
Climax
There is not a true climax, but the closest thing is when Moore abruptly
announces that the sea is a "well excavated grave." She then proceeds to
spend the rest of the poem explaining (obliquely, of course) what she means
by that.
Foreshadowing
n/a
Understatement
-"looking as if it were not that ocean in which / dropped things are bound to
sink" refers to death
Allusions
n/a
Metonymy and Synecdoche
n/a
Personification
-"the sea is a collector"
-"the wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx"
Hyperbole
n/a
Onomatopoeia
-"rustle"