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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.
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. 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".
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.
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".
Poems by this Poet
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Spring Time Is Coming | 31 July 2013 |
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Temperance Reform Clubs | 31 July 2013 |
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The Author's Early Life | 31 July 2013 |
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The Brave Page Boys | 31 July 2013 |
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The Brave Volunteer | 31 July 2013 |
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The Burial in the Snow | 31 July 2013 |
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The Dear Old Flag | 31 July 2013 |
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The Flag | 31 July 2013 |
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The Great Chicago Fire | 31 July 2013 |
(1 vote) |
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The Orphan's Friend | 31 July 2013 |
(1 vote) |
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