Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of English, Emerita, at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Her many books include Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar, Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century, and Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them.

• Preface Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. "Inquisitive Intensity" in Marianne Moore 3. An "Unintelligible Vernacular": Questions of Voice 4. "Your Thorns Are the Best Part of You": Gender Politics in the Nongendered Poem 5. "The Labors of Hercules": Celebrating and Overcoming "Race" 6. Quotation, Community, and Correspondences 7. Questioning Authority in the Late Twentieth Century Notes Index

A bold and significant study of the function of Moore’s distinct and strategic use of poetic authority… Miller’s book is also an original contribution to existing Moore scholarship in its insistence of the intricate relationship between Moore’s poetic practice and her political and cultural engagement with the world she inhabited. Miller’s analysis of the historical and cultural forces that necessarily shaped Moore’s life and work is insightful and meticulous in its range of reference… Miller’s readings of Moore’s poems about race and nationality are provocative, suggestive, and far-reaching in their implications for future considerations of modernist writers’ responses to race… Miller’s book is admirable in its carefully orchestrated balance between close readings of Moore’s work and nuanced readings of the historical context in which she worked and produced her art. The revisionary thrust of this book is important, timely, and a major contribution to Moore studies and the history of modernism.