August 2, 2007
When She Was Bad She Was Horrid Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 03:20 PM EST An Associated Press story tells of efforts in Edinburgh, Scotland, to honor William McGonagall, a native of the city who is widely acclaimed as “the world’s worst poet.” As an example, the article cites this excerpt from what may be McGonagall’s most famous work, “The Tay Bridge Disaster”: Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember’d for a very long time. Okay, I’ll admit, that is pretty bad. And plenty more along similar lines can be found here. But for capturing the narrative sweep of an epic tragedy, does it really compare with this: Have you heard of the dreadful fate
Of Mr. P. P. Bliss and wife?
Of their death I will relate,
And also others lost their life;
Ashtabula Bridge disaster,
Where so many people died
Without a thought that destruction
Would plunge them ‘neath the wheel of tide. Those lines were not written by any whiskey-sipping habitué of cosmopolitan Edinburgh; they sprang from the fertile soil of America’s heartland, courtesy of a Michigan farmer named Julia A. Moore. McGonagall the world’s worst? Ha! It’s the old, old story: A woman has to be twice as bad as a man to get half the recognition. This all stems from the “separate spheres” mentality, in which women were allowed to be bad at cooking, driving, and other humble pursuits, while leaving incompetence at lofty subjects like poetry, politics, and warfare to the “stronger” sex. These days Julia Moore is forgotten; no plaques, monuments, or memorials perpetuate her memory. Yet in the years following the 1876 publication of her debut collection, The Sentimental Song Book, Moore was celebrated nationwide as the Sweet Singer of Michigan. Today, when the Internet makes a cornucopia of awful writing available with a few clicks, it can be hard to appreciate the impact made by Moore’s not-slim-enough volume. Reviews ranged from mock raves (“a coal of fire on the altar of poesy,” “a collection the like of which has never tested the strength of type before”) to blunt ridicule (“Shakespeare, if he could read it, would be glad he was dead”). The acclaim was surely deserved for an author capable of writing lines like the following: “His father and mother being dead,/ It left him an orphan boy./ When he was with his brother/ His health failed him, poor boy./ Kind friends they thought ‘twould do him good/ To travel for his health;/ To California he did go/ With his Uncle Zera French.” In common with Lord Byron (of whom she wrote, “‘Lord Byron’ was an Englishman/ A poet I believe,/ His first works in old England/ Was poorly received”), she did not hesitate to strike back at her critics in verse: “Perhaps they talk for meanness/ And perhaps it is in jest,/ If they leave out their freeness/ It would suit me now the best.” Yet that was as much hostility as Moore, who clearly merited the “Sweet” half of her sobriquet, was capable of. In the end, she threw herself on the mercy of her readers: “And now, kind friends, what I have wrote/ I hope you will pass o’er/ And not criticise as some have done/ Hitherto herebefore.” Satirists from Bill Nye to Mark Twain imitated the Sweet Singer, often with quite amusing results, but none could match Moore’s guileless blend of banality and self-assurance. Like Walt Whitman, Moore was at her best when celebrating the richness and exuberance of American life: “On a moonlight evening, in the month of May/ A number of young people were playing at croquet.” Elsewhere, not unlike a later poet with the same last name—Marianne Moore, who penned odes to the Brooklyn Dodgers—the Sweet Singer immortalized the Grand Rapids Cricket Club: “In Grand Rapids is a handsome club/ Of men that cricket play/ As fine a set of skillful men/ That can their skill display.” Julia Moore ended her career at her husband’s insistence after being jeered at a public reading in December 1878, but discerning readers and critics have never forgotten the Sweet Singer of Michigan. Readers who wish to experience Moore’s work for themselves can purchase Mortal Refrains, a reprint of her complete works, edited and with an introduction by Thomas J. Riedlinger, or visit this website. Julia A. Moore exemplified a newly confident America, one that no longer deferred to the Old World even in pursuits requiring previously unimagined levels of ineptitude. Moreover, in an era of rampant sexism, she struck a resounding blow for equality, demonstrating that badness knows no gender. Most of all, in the nation’s centennial year, her debut volume served as a second Declaration of Independence, heralding a world where an unschooled woman in a land recently reclaimed from wilderness, strengthened by years of farm toil and nourished by the prairie sun, could be more than a match for the worst Europe had to offer.
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