Books: New Shine on Old Truths

THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE (342 pp.)—Translated by Marianne Moore—Viking ($5).

For a quarter of a century, some of the finest poetry written in the U.S. has come from a modest apartment on a rundown street in Brooklyn. But in recent years it has come only in a thin trickle. Since 1945, only three poems have been published by the charming grey-haired spinster who has won every U.S. poetry prize worth winning. Not that Marianne Moore had been idle in the last eight years; she had never worked so hard in her life....