Moore came to the attention of poets as diverse as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound beginning with her first publication in 1915. From 1925 until 1929, Moore served as editor of the literary and cultural journal
The Dial. This continued her role, similar to that of Pound, as a patron of poetry; much later, she encouraged promising young poets, including Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and James Merrill.
In 1933, Moore was awarded the Helen Haire Levinson Prize from
Poetry. Her
Collected Poems of 1951 is perhaps her most rewarded work; it earned the poet the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. Moore became a minor celebrity in New York literary circles, serving as unofficial hostess for the mayor. She attended boxing matches, baseball games and other public events, dressed in what became her signature garb, a tricorn hat and a black cape. She particularly liked athletics and athletes and was a great admirer of Muhammad Ali, for whose spoken-word album,
I Am the Greatest!, she wrote liner notes. Moore continued to publish poems in various journals, including
The Nation,
The New Republic, and
Partisan Review, as well as publishing various books and collections of her poetry and criticism.
Moore corresponded with Ezra Pound from 1919, even during his incarceration. She opposed Benito Mussolini and Fascism from the start and objected to Pound's antisemitism. Moore herself was a conservative Republican and supported Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932. She was a life-long ally and friend of the American poet Wallace Stevens. See for instance her review of Stevens's first anthology,
Harmonium, and in particular her comment about the influence of Henri Rousseau on the poem "Floral Decorations for Bananas'".
Her most famous poem is perhaps the one entitled, appropriately, "Poetry", in which she hopes for poets who can produce "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." It also expressed her idea that meter, or anything else that claims the exclusive title "poetry", is not as important as delight in language and precise, heartfelt expression in any form. She often composed her own poetry in syllabics. These syllabic lines from "Poetry" illustrate her position: poetry is a matter of skill and honesty in any form whatsoever, while anything written poorly, although in perfect form, cannot be poetry:
- :::nor is it valid
- :::::to discriminate against "business documents and
- :school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
- ::::however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry