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Kirkwood, southwest of the city of St. Louis, had a talented and influential figure in the field of literature born within its limits in 1887. Marianne Moore was one of few female poets who gained notoriety in her day—not posthumously—and incidentally, was born a mere 12 miles from the birthplace of another famous St. Louis native, T.S. Eliot. Moore and Eliot, born one year apart, were major players in the Modernist movement, which revolutionized the way poetry was written in America and in Britain. They also knew of each other’s work, corresponded, and mingled with the same people over the course of their lifetimes. Eliot, however, left America in his twenties and eventually became a British citizen. Moore stayed as poet in the United States (even though many more of her contemporaries had also left for Europe) and she carved a niche for herself not only as an American poet, but a female one as well.

Moore lived the first sixteen years of her life in Kirkwood, raised by a single mother after her parents separated due to her father’s mental illness. Moore was close to her family members, corresponding regularly with them, and honing her writing skills with letters before she developed her own style of poetry that she would eventually pioneer to the rest of the literary community.

Moore’s poetry is inundated with strong imagery and formal diction without set meter or rhyme. One of her poems, titled “Poetry,” muses that poets should create “imaginary gardens with real toads.” In other words, the imagination is the most important vehicle for poetic creation, since it creates the setting and idea and context for a given work. At the same time, the imagination should be so finely tuned and the poem so well-executed that it should feel real to the audience, and exist outside of the mind of the reader—this is what “real toads” refers to. Moore’s poems illustrate this concept again and again; her imagery is powerful, evocative, and expansive over a large body of work.

Moore lived to age 84 and worked as a poet until her death. She gained fame throughout her lifetime, awards, and was featured on the cover of several magazines. Moore devoted her life to her craft, and it showed through years of creative triumphs during a time of radical shifts in the literary world, largely thanks to Moore and her contemporaries like Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Allen Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath.

Kirkwood has a significant claim to fame as Moore’s native town. Moreover, tutors in Kirkwood work to create the real toads in imaginary gardens with careful attention to detail and need in each of their appointments with students. Drawing out skill and progress is a process, but tutors are trained to bring those things to life in their clients’ academic success.