Marianne Moore’s ‘Granite and Steel’: A Late Perspective on New York City

Marianne Moore lived in New York for over 50 years, uninterruptedly, taking part in the city’s intense social life, particularly since the ’50s. Some of the poet’s most beautiful poems are located in New York, centered on some aspects or activities of the city’s daily life or on the city itself as a specific kind of space different from other spaces such as the sea, the wilderness or Europe. The goal of my essay is to show that “Granite and Steel”, published in 1966, is the result of the poet’s life-long relationship with New York and that it is one of the most powerful poems Moore has written about this city. Reminiscent in its structure and in its organizing principle of her early, and more famous, poems on the subject, “Granite and Steel” testifies also the evolution of her perceptions in relation to this town. This poem is the poet’s best example, among her later works, of her response to the city, a response started during her college years and present in all her oeuvre, although to different degrees.