Customer Reviews

Mortal Refrains: The Complete Collected Poetry, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan

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Primitive and patriotic, sentimental and silly, and lacking in grammar, rhythm, and rhyme, the work of "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" is often laugh-out-loud funny. Julia Moore's most famous couplet runs: "Come all you people from far and near,/ Oh, come and see what you can hear." Little of her work ever rises above that level-- but what makes this homespun Homer especially thrilling is she's always sincere, oblivious to her lack of talent. She's like a found-object guest on the Letterman show, or a nineteenth-century Ed Wood: she's the only one who isn't in on the joke she's telling herself. Most of Moore's poems are occasional pieces inspired by newspaper articles on subjects as diverse as politics, plagues, and temperance, and many are set to popular ballads of the day. Her greatest inspiration, however, came from the obituary pages. Even among Victorians she is notable for the degree to which she could get worked up over the death of a total stranger. Her influence was vast. Mark Twain parodied her loopy sentimentality; Ogden Nash imitated her penchant for forced rhymes and missed beats. The difference is that Twain and Nash intended their comic effects: poor Julia's were accidental, and she was understandably upset when at long last she realized people were laughing at her. "Like Herman Melville," one critic observed in 1928, Moore retreated into silence for many years after reading too many unflattering reviews. All praise is due Thomas Riedlinger for preserving Moore's work for a new generation of readers. It's awful-- in every sense of the word.