'My Lady Greensleeves': Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams and the Objectivist Nexus

This paper begins with a little known poem by William Carlos Williams, 'Struggle of Wings', first published in the Dial in 1926 when Marianne Moore was editing the magazine. The exchanges between the two poets over this poem are instructive not only as evidence of the material constraints of magazine publication but also in terms of their poetic differences. These differences, I argue, inform poetic developments in the nineteen thirties. While the influence of Pound and Williams on the poetry associated with Objectivism has been explored in some detail, Moore’s influence, particularly on Zukofsky, has received little attention. I aim to correct this oversight by concluding with a brief examination of part of Zukofsky’s A-8, a poem that features Moore herself as the figure of ‘my Lady Greensleeves’.