Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RADICAL, by MARIANNE MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RADICAL, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tapering / to a point, conserving everything
Last Line: To hinder.
Subject(s): Carrots; Slavery; Serfs


TAPERING
to a point, conserving everything,
this carrot is predestined to be thick.
The world is
but a circumstance, a mis-
erable corn-patch for its feet. With ambition, imagination, outgrowth,

nutriment,
with everything crammed belligerent-
ly inside itself, its fibres breed mon-
opoly—
a tail-like, wedge-shaped engine with the
secret of expansion, fused with intensive heat to color of the set-

ting sun and
stiff. For the man in the straw hat, stand-
ing still and turning to look back at it,
as much as
to say my happiest moment has
been funereal in comparison with this, the conditions of life pre-

determined
slavery to be easy and freedom hard. For
it? Dismiss
agrarian lore; it tells him this:
that which it is impossible to force, it is impossible
to hinder.





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