Color Sparkles in Prismatic Color

Marianne Moore gracefully etched her way into a lasting place in poetry when it was overwhelmingly masculine. She did so by composing her poetry with unique style and many meticulous details. At first glance, Moore's poetry appears to be nature-oriented and full of facts. However, upon closer examination, Moore uses nature and natural descriptions to illustrate the narrator's deeper feelings and conflicts.

For example, "In the Days of Prismatic Colour," Moore describes the "murkiness" and "opacity" of truth. The way Moore writes the poem seems to describe the evolution of human beings from the general chaos of the depths of the ocean. She describes the the evolution in an objective, distanced way, "Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
was torpid in its lair." In the short-legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiae--we have the

classic

multitude of feet." If one transposes this general struggle of the human condition into the context of era of the "Lost Generation" that Moore participated in, her poem takes on further meaning. Suddenly, the struggle becomes the animal against "the wave" that threatens to obscure truth in its murkiness. Moore's narrator seems to acknowledge and respond to this struggle with the statement, "The wave may go over it if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says,
'I shall be there when the wave has gone by'." Moore uses the nature imagery to describe society's deep angst and search for meaning in the wake of the first World War.