ABSTRACT Marianne Moore and Gertrude Stein can be located at the heart of the avant-garde that engendered new literary forms and modes of expression in the first half of the twentieth century. This article will explore both similarities and differences in the poets' methods of disrupting the dominant discourses, with a special emphasis on the use of language and conventions of representation and signification. The subtle and elusive subversiveness of Marianne Moore's poem "Marriage" will be juxtaposed with Gertrude Stein's violent deconstructive assaults in her "Patriarchal poetry". Stein's and Moore's works share an impulse towards non-centrism and non-finality of meaning, plasticity and flexibility of form, and a conviction that a poem is a self-conscious process challenging the boundaries of logic, categorization, and the reader's own expectations.
