Oddlet: Marianne Moore · 1 min read
Aug 19, 2026
The Poet Ford Hired
What happens when a car company asks a sixty-seven-year-old Pulitzer poet to name their next sedan?
In October 1955, the Ford Motor Company wrote to Marianne Moore in Brooklyn. They were building a new car. They had no name for it. They wondered if a Pulitzer-winning poet, age sixty-seven, might help.
She could. She did. For six weeks, from her apartment on Cumberland Street, she mailed Detroit her suggestions in formal letters, one batch at a time, with the care of a poet doing poet's work.
She proposed the Intelligent Whale. She proposed the Mongoose Civique. She proposed the Pastelogram, the Resilient Bullet, the Bullet Cloisonné, the Andante con Moto, the Ford Fabergé, the Arc-en-Ciel, the Dearborn Diamanté, the Turbotorc, the Anticipator, the Aéroterre, the Thunder Crester. Ford answered, formally, each time.
In November 1956, David Wallace of the Special Products Division wrote to tell her they had chosen a name out of more than six thousand. Reading his letter you can feel him bracing. "Our name, dear Miss Moore," he wrote, "is — Edsel."
Her last and dearest submission had been Utopian Turtletop.
The Edsel was one of the worst-selling cars in American history.
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- Wikipedia: Marianne Moore — Comprehensive biography covering birth/death dates, family, education at Bryn Mawr, residences, Dial editorship, 1951 Pulitzer/NBA/Bollingen trifecta for Collected Poems, additional prizes, friendships, Ford/Edsel correspondence, and 1968 Yankee Stadium first pitch.
- Letters of Note: 'May I submit UTOPIAN TURTLETOP?' by Shaun Usher — Detailed account of the Ford correspondence (1955-1956) with David Wallace of the Special Products Division, list of names Moore proposed, the November 8, 1956 reply naming the Edsel.
- Library of America Story of the Week: 'Poetry in Motion' — Confirms Moore threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium's 1968 Opening Day at age 80; documents her shift from Brooklyn Dodgers to Yankees fandom and supplies direct baseball quotes.
- NEH Humanities: 'When Muhammad Ali Wrote a Poem with Marianne Moore' — Plimpton-orchestrated meeting; sonnet on a menu; Moore's quote about meeting 'the greatest.'
- Poetry Foundation: Marianne Moore — Standard reference biographical entry on Moore's career, modernist poetics, Dial editorship, prizes, and influence.
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