Julia A. Moore
Encyclopedia
Plainfield Township, Kent County, Michigan
Plainfield Charter Township is a charter township of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. According to the 2000 census, the population was 30,195 . The township forms part of the metro Grand Rapids area. It derives its name from the extinct lumbertown of Plainfield founded in 1838 by Andrew...
(December 1, 1847–June 5, 1920), was an American poet
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, or more precisely, poetaster
Poetaster
Poetaster, like rhymester or versifier, is a contemptuous name often applied to bad or inferior poets. Specifically, poetaster has implications of unwarranted pretentions to artistic value. The word was coined in Latin by Erasmus in 1521...
. Like Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
's William Topaz McGonagall
William Topaz McGonagall
William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, doggerel poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of or concern for his peers' opinions of his work....
, she is famed chiefly for writing notoriously bad poetry.
Biography
Young Julia grew up on her family's Michigan farm, the eldest of four children. When she was ten, her mother became ill, and Julia assumed many of her mother's responsibilities. Her formal education was thereby limited. 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
1876 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Robert Bridges, The Growth of Love...
by C. M. Loomis of Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
, and quickly went into a second printing. A copy ended up in the hands of James F. Ryder, a Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
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.
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 WellerThe Pickwick PapersThe Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
suspected Job Trotter was, 'with a main, as is allus let on.'…
The collection became a curious best-seller, though it is unclear whether this was due to public amusement with Moore's poetry or genuine appreciation of the admittedly "sentimental
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
" character of her poems. It was, more or less, the last gasp of that school of obituary poetry
Obituary poetry
Obituary poetry, in the broad sense, includes any poem that commemorates a person or group of people's death: an elegy.In its stricter sense, though, it refers to a genre of popular verse or folk poetry that had its greatest popularity in the nineteenth century, especially in the United States of...
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
1877 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .- The Annus mirabilis of poetastery:In the annals of poetasting, 1877 stands out as a historic year....
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
1878 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* 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 ...
, 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.
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
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
set in the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. 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.
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.
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.
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 DickinsonEmily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
the majority of her verse is in the ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
meter. Like McGonagall, she held a maidenly bluestocking
Bluestocking
A bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman. Until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes. However it subsequently was applied primarily to intellectual women, and the French equivalent bas bleu had a similar connotation. The term later developed...
's allegiance to the Temperance movement
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
, and frequently indited ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
s to the joys of sobriety. Most importantly, like McGonagall, she was drawn to themes of accident
Accident
An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its...
, disaster
Disaster
A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment...
, and sudden death; as has been said of A. E. Housman
A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...
's A Shropshire Lad
A Shropshire Lad
A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman . Some of the better-known poems in the book are "To an Athlete Dying Young", "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty".The collection was published in 1896...
, in her pages you can count the dead and wounded. Edgar Wilson Nye
Edgar Wilson Nye
Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye was a distinguished American journalist, who later became widely known as a humorist...
called her "worse than a Gatling gun
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun is one of the best known early rapid-fire weapons and a forerunner of the modern machine gun. It is well known for its use by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s, which was the first time it was employed in combat...
". Here, she is inspired by the Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about in Chicago, Illinois. Though the fire was one of the largest U.S...
:
- 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
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
:
- 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 TwainMark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
to create the character of Emmeline Grangerford in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
. Grangerford's funereal ode to Stephen Dowling Botts —
- 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
Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
, 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
- 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
Charles Lee
Charles Lee may refer to:*Charles Lee , former NFL player*Charles Lee *Charles Lee , British author*Charles Lee *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.
See also
- James McIntyre
- Amanda McKittrick Ros
- Obituary poetryObituary poetryObituary poetry, in the broad sense, includes any poem that commemorates a person or group of people's death: an elegy.In its stricter sense, though, it refers to a genre of popular verse or folk poetry that had its greatest popularity in the nineteenth century, especially in the United States of...