"Literary is a work very difficult to do" — Julia A. Moore

Julia Ann Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan", born Julia Ann Davis in Plainfield Township, Kent County, Michigan (December 1, 1847–June 5, 1920), was an American poet, or more precisely, poetaster. Like Scotland's William Topaz McGonagall, she is famed chiefly for writing notoriously bad poetry. Image File history File links Julia_a_moore. ... Plainfield Township is a charter township located in Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. ... December 1 is the 335th (in leap years the 336th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1847 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... June 5 is the 156th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (157th in leap years), with 209 days remaining. ... Year 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Poetaster, rhymester or versifier are contemptuous names often applied to bad or inferior poets. ... Motto: (Latin) No one provokes me with impunity(English) Wha daur meddle wi me? (Scots)[1] Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official languages English, Gaelic, Scots[2] Government  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Jack McConnell MSP Unification    - by Kenneth I... William Topaz McGonagall (1825 – 29 September 1902) was a Scottish weaver, actor, and poet. ...

Biography

Young Julia grew up on her family's Michigan farm, the eldest of four children. When she was ten, her mother became infirm, and Julia assumed many of her mother's responsibilities. Her formal education was thereby limited, and she never read the "great poets". In her mid-teens, she started writing poetry and songs, mostly in response to the death of children she knew, but any newspaper account of disaster could inspire her.

At age 17, she married Frederick Franklin Moore, a farmer. Julia ran a small store, and over the years, bore ten children, of whom six survived to adulthood. She continued to write poetry and songs.

Moore's first book of verse, The Sentimental Song Book was published in 1876 by C. M. Loomis of Grand Rapids, and quickly went into a second printing. A copy ended up in the hands of James F. Ryder, a Cleveland publisher, who republished it under the title The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public. Ryder sent out numerous review copies to newspapers across the country, with a cover letter filled with low key mock praise. // Robert Browning, Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper William Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, and the Fall of the Niblungs Sarah Cleghorn (died 1959), American poet and socialist June 20 — John Neal, 82, author, art critic, literary critic, poet, who refused to emulate British authors by writing... Nickname: Location of Grand Rapids within Kent County, Michigan Coordinates: Country United States State Michigan County Kent  - Mayor George Heartwell Area    - City 45. ... Cleveland redirects here. ...

And so Moore received national attention. Following Ryder's lead, contemporary reviews were amusedly negative. The Rochester Democrat wrote of Sweet Singer, that "Shakespeare, could he read it, would be glad that he was dead …. If Julia A. Moore would kindly deign to shed some of her poetry on our humble grave, we should be but too glad to go out and shoot ourselves tomorrow." The Hartford Daily Times said that "to meet such steady and unremitting demands on the lachrymal ducts one must be provided, as Sam Weller suspected Job Trotter was, 'with a main, as is allus let on.'…" The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, better known as The Pickwick Papers, is the first novel by Charles Dickens. ...

The collection became a curious best-seller, though it is hard to determine at this remove whether it was due to public amusement at the works it contained, or whether it was due to public appreciation of the admittedly "sentimental" character of the poems contained therein. Perhaps some measure of both was comingled in this spate of popularity. It was, more or less, the last gasp of the school of obituary poetry that had been broadly popular in the U. S. throughout the mid-19th century.

Moore gave a reading and singing performance, with orchestral accompaniment, in 1877 at a Grand Rapids opera house. She managed to interpret jeering as criticism of the orchestra. Moore's second collection, A Few Choice Words to the Public appeared in 1878, but found few buyers. Moore gave a second public performance in late 1878 at the same opera house. By then she had figured out that the praise directed to her was false and the jeering sincere. She began by admitting her poetry was "partly full of mistakes" and that "literary is a work very hard to do". After the poetry and the laughter and jeering in response was over, Moore ended the show by telling the audience: "You have come here and paid twenty-five cents to see a fool; I receive seventy-five dollars, and see a whole houseful of fools." // In the annals of poetasting, 1877 stands out as a historic year. ... // Notorious American poetaster Julia A. Moore publishes her second collection, A Few Choice Words to the Public, but unlike her bestseller of 1876, The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public, it finds few buyers. ...

Afterwards, her husband forbade her to publish any more poetry. Three more poems were eventually published, and she would write poems for friends. In 1880, she also published, in newspaper serialization, a short story "Lost and Found", a strongly moralistic story about a drunkard, and a novella "Sunshine and Shadow", a peculiar romance set in the American Revolution. The ending of "Sunshine and Shadow" was perhaps intended to be self-referential: the farmer facing foreclosure is gratefully rescued by his wife's publishing her secret cache of fiction. Year 1880 (MDCCCLXXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar). ... A romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. ... John Trumbulls Declaration of Independence, showing the five-man committee in charge of drafting the Declaration in 1776 as it presents its work to the Second Continental Congress The American Revolution refers to the period during the last half of the 18th century in which the Thirteen Colonies that...

According to some reports, though, her husband was not grateful, but embarrassed. Shamed or not, he moved the family 100 miles north to Manton in 1882. Moore's notoriety was known in Manton, but the locals respected her, and did not cooperate with the occasional reporter trying to revisit the past. They were a successful business couple, he with an orchard and sawmill, she with a store. Year 1882 (MDCCCLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar. ...

Her husband died in 1914. The next year, Julia republished "Sunshine and Shadow" in pamphlet form. She spent much of her widowhood "melancholy", sitting on her porch. She died quietly in 1920. The news of her death was widely reported, sometimes with a light touch. 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

On her poetry

Some comparison to William McGonagall is worth making. Unlike McGonagall, Moore commanded a fairly wide variety of meters and forms, albeit like Emily Dickinson the majority of her verse is in the ballad meter. Her versification is better than McGonagall's, although only slightly. Like McGonagall, she held a maidenly bluestocking's allegiance to the Temperance movement, and frequently indited odes to the joys of sobriety. Most importantly, like McGonagall, she was drawn to themes of accident, disaster, and sudden death; as has been said of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, in her pages you can count the dead and wounded. Edgar Wilson Nye called her "worse than a Gatling gun". Here, she is inspired by the Great Chicago Fire: William Topaz McGonagall (1825–September 29, 1902) was a weaver, actor, and poet. ... In literature, meter or metre (sometimes known as prosody) is a term used in the scansion (analysis into metrical patterns) of poetry, usually indicated by the kind of feet and the number of them. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies A ballad is a story, usually a narrative or poem, in a song. ... The Bluestocking society was an informal womens social and educational movement that came into being in England in the mid-eighteenth century in imitation of a similar - though more formal - movement in France. ... A cartoon from Australia ca. ... Ode (Classical Greek: ) is a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse. ... A railing accidentally collapses at a college football game, spilling fans onto the sidelines An accident is something going wrong unexpectedly. ... Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 – April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. ... A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. ... Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill) (1850 - 1896) was a U.S. humorist. ... The Gatling gun is a gunpowder field weapon invented in the 1860s which used multiple rotating barrels turned by a hand crank. ... Artists rendering of the fire, by John R Chapin, originally printed in Harpers Weekly The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday October 8 to early Tuesday October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about four square miles in Chicago, Illinois. ...

The great Chicago Fire, friends,
     Will never be forgot;
In the history of Chicago
     It will remain a darken spot.
It was a dreadful horrid sight
     To see that City in flames;
But no human aid could save it,
     For all skill was tried in vain.

Her less morbid side is on display when she hymns Temperance Reform Clubs:

Many a man joined the club
     That never drank a drachm,
Those noble men were kind and brave
     They care not for the slang --
The slang they meet on every side:
     "You're a reform drunkard, too;
You've joined the red ribbon brigade,
     Among the drunkard crew."

Despite her acknowledgment that "Literary is a work very difficult to do," she did not approve of the life of Byron: Lord Byron, Anglo-Scottish poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (January 22, 1788–April 19, 1824) was an Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. ...

The character of "Lord Byron"
     Was of a low degree,
Caused by his reckless conduct,
     And bad company.
He sprung from an ancient house,
     Noble, but poor, indeed.
His career on earth, was marred
     By his own misdeeds.

Influences

Her chief claim to contemporary note, however, is that she inspired Mark Twain to create the character of Emmeline Grangerford in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Grangerford's funereal ode to Stephen Dowling Botts — Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer. ... Mark Twain Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain is commonly accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. ...

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
     Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
     By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
     Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
     In the realms of the good and great. (Twain)

is not far removed from Moore's poems on subjects like Little Libbie:

One more little spirit to Heaven has flown,
     To dwell in that mansion above,
Where dear little angels, together roam,
     In God's everlasting love. (Moore)

Moore was also the inspiration for comic poet Ogden Nash, as he acknowledged in his first book, and whose daughter reported that her work convinced Nash to become a "great bad poet" instead of a "bad good poet". The Oxford Companion to American Literature describes Nash as using Moore's Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet best known for writing pithy and funny light verse. ...

hyperdithyrambic meters, pseudo-poetic inversions, gangling asymmetrical lines, extremely pat or elaborately inexact rimes, parenthetical dissertations, and unexpected puns.

Selections of Moore appeared in D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee's famous Stuffed Owl anthology, and in other collections of bad poetry. Most of her poetry was reprinted in a 1928 edition, which can be found on-line. Her complete poetry and prose, with biography, notes, and references, can be found in the Riedlinger edited collection Mortal Refrains. Most poetry collections reprint the latest, "best", versions of their contents. Riedlinger has adopted the opposite philosophy. (Dominic) Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL (March 9, 1891–November 21, 1969) was a British writer best known for his humorous contributions to newspapers and for controversial biographies. ... Charles Lee may refer to: Charles Lee (general) (1732–1782), American Revolutionary War Charles Lee (Attorney General) (1758–1815) This human name article is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that might otherwise share the same title, which is a persons or persons name. ... Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ...

See also

• James McIntyre
• Amanda McKittrick Ros

James McIntyre (1827-1906), called The Cheese Poet, was a Canadian poet. ... Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860–1939) (born Anna Margaret McKittrick, later Anna Ross) was an Irish writer. ...

External links

• Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan
• Rockford Michigan Centennial Celebration Program (1939): Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan

References

• Lewis, D. B. Wyndham, and Lee, Charles (eds.): The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Verse N.Y. Review of Books (2003), reprint edition. ISBN 1-59017-038-5
• Petras, Ross: Very Bad Poetry Vintage (1997). ISBN 0-679-77622-2
• Riedlinger, Thomas J. (ed.) Mortal Refrains: The Complete Collected Poetry, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan Michigan State University Press (1998) ISBN 0-87013-449-3