He often expressed

A curious wish,

To be interchangeably

Man and fish;

To nibble the bait

Off the hook,

Said he,

And then slip away

Like a ghost

In the sea.

Marianne Moore was born on November 15, 1887, in Kirkwood, Missouri. She emerged in the literary world as part of the Imagist movement; fellow Imagist poet H.D. had Moore’s first book published without her knowledge in 1921. Moore died in 1972.