Merrill Moore - (1903-1957)

Columbia

By William W. Applegarth
Austin Peay State University at Fort Campbell, Kentucky

Read another essay on Merrill Moore written by Tennessee student Monica Kent.

I.  Introduction

Many people contend that Merrill Moore's poetry was highly influenced by his father, John Trotwood Moore, and by the works of his friend John Crowe Ransom.  Close inspection of Moore's works indicates that the author's style and volume owe much to other factors as well.  Moore, not completely satisfied with being a mere psychiatrist and published author, was also a World War II veteran; a conchologist; an avid reader in English, French, Spanish, and German; a prodigious photographer; and a student of geography, geology, astronomy, chemistry, and zoology.  Though influenced by his father and Ransom, early in life Isaac Ball also shaped Moore's works.  Ball, the principal and an instructor at the Montgomery Bell Academy, discovered and nurtured Moore's natural affinity for the sonnet form.  Ball would often have the young Moore write sonnets instead of essays and other classroom assignments (Wells p. 62).  Merrill Moore's works owe more to the life and experiences that were the man than to any one influence.

II.  Biography

Moore was born Austin Merrill Moore on September 11, 1903 in Columbia Tennessee.  His parents were John Trotwood Moore and Mary Brown Daniel Moore.  Merrill Moore credits John Trotwood Moore, a renowned writer in his own right, as being his earliest literary influence.  Strong familial and emotional ties to the South are as easily seen in Moore's life as in his works.  Moore's paternal grandfather was a captain in the Confederate army.  His father, John Trotwood Moore, held the post as the Tennessee State director of libraries, archives and history from 1919 until his death in 1929.  Mary Brown Daniel Moore assumed the post upon her husband's death in 1929 (Wells p.20). 

In 1907, the Moore family moved from Columbia to Nashville, allowing Merrill to attend the Montgomery Bell Academy in preparation for college at Vanderbilt.  While in attendance at Montgomery Bell Academy, Moore's aptitude for sonnets was discovered and encouraged by Isaac Ball.  Though Moore's father wished him to work on a country newspaper, Merrill opted instead to attend the Vanderbilt Medical School in 1921 (American p. 461).

Early in his collegiate period, Moore encountered a loose knit group of friends who occasionally met for philosophical debate.  This group, eventually known as the "Fugitive group", generally met at the home of James Frank and Sidney Hirsch.  The members of the group would often engage in heated debate, leading to arguments.  During these arguments, members "who had poetry in the crevices of their minds all along brought some of it out and fired it at the enemy" (Wells p. 39).  This poetic "ammunition" naturally evolved, with Hirsch's encouragement, into the press publication known as The Fugitive in April 1922.  Starting with the second issue of The Fugitive Moore published a total of sixty-two poetic pieces in its pages.  Forty-six of his works were sonnets and the remaining sixteen were short lyrical works.  All of Moore's works were published in The Fugitive under the pseudonym "Dendric" (Wells p.40).

Moore continued his education at Vanderbilt, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1924 and a Medical Doctorate in 1928.  Moore married Anne Leslie Nichols on August 14, 1930.  The couple had four children, three sons: Adam (1931), John (1933), and Leslie (1935), and a daughter, Hester, in 1937 (Vertical file).  Moore served in a medical capacity in the U.S. Army during World War II both in New Zealand and the South Pacific.  Moore died of cancer on September 20, 1957 in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Moore's professional life began with a one-year internship at Saint Thomas Hospital after graduation from Vanderbilt.  Shortly after his father's death in 1929, Moore accepted a position at Boston City Hospital.  During his tenure at Boston City Hospital and later while in private psychiatric practice, Moore instructed at the prestigious Harvard Medical School. 

During the decade following graduation, Moore managed to publish three books of poetry and 1,400 individual poems in addition to a multitude of articles submitted to medical and psychiatric journals.  Moore volunteered his services to the U.S. Army during World War II, earning a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation medal.  After his military service, Merrill Moore returned to private practice of psychiatry in Boston.  Moore was known as something of an expert in the fields of alcoholism and suicide, having researched both extensively (American, p. 461).

III.  Literary Works

Throughout the maelstrom of his professional life Moore continued sonnetizing, eventually filling thirty steel cabinets in an outbuilding of his home, his "sonnetorium" (American, p.462).  Various sources credit Moore with having written anywhere from fifty to one hundred thousand sonnets.  Moore "was said to have kept a pad of paper attached to the dashboard of his car and scratched off a sonnet…every time he had to wait for a red light" (Ciardi, p. 27).  Moore described his writing as a "compulsive addiction" and as "occupational therapy" (American, p. 462).  In a 1956 reunion with other "Fugitives" at Vanderbilt University Moore maintained that he "never dared write more than fourteen lines at a time (and was) probably inhibited from doing so" (Vanderbilt p.148).

Attempting to analyze Moore's works without directly acknowledging the tremendous influence of the Fugitive group is tantamount to analyzing Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by watching West Side Story. Moore's own words, "we all influenced each other; we all rubbed the edges off each other and knocked sparks out of each other in a peculiar way" (Vanderbilt, p. 149) indicate his acceptance of the Fugitive group as a formative element in his writing.  Moore attributed John Crowe Ransom as the "most readable" of the group (Vanderbilt, p. 144).  Ransom, in the foreword for Moore's The Noise that Time Makes , states that Moore is "a spontaneous poet, that is, free and easy in his way of generating poems, beyond anybody I know" (Moore, p. ix).

No study of the multifaceted Moore could be considered complete without a literary analysis of at least one of his works.  This is no exception to that rule.  While researching Moore's life for this project I read his A Doctor's Book of Hours and found it both insightful and thought provoking.  Moore's poems in this book are categorized into monthly sections with such dubious titles as "Libido" and "Philosophic".  I found Moore's poetry to be extremely readable, pertinent to today's society as well as to that of his time, and quite well written.  Detractors of his poetry notoriously classified Moore as a man who would rather write a half dozen new sonnets than revise one already written (Ciardi, p. 27).  This cannot be held against the man.  Moore's sonnet form, though hardly traditional was, at the time a breakthrough in free verse and literary expression.

Any reader can find something in the magnitude of Moore's works to satisfy his tastes.  Some of the sonnets in A Doctor's Book of Hours such as "Mother is All too Often the Memory of the Family" and "Phenomenon" are to be savored slowly like a glass of fine wine.  Other selections, like "Even the Female Cockroach is Sturdier" and "Bubbles Attract Stilettos in the Same Way Balloons Attract a Lighted Cigarette", are easily gulped down like lemonade on a hot summer day.  One particularly noteworthy mannerism encountered in reading this anthology is Moore's use of lengthy titles.  In some poems, Moore's titles serve as a direct tie in to the body of the poem, circumventing the traditional fourteen-line sonnet form.  Moore's ability to shape the raw word is priceless.  Inspiring and poignant imagery is a hallmark of his work.

As earlier stated, several of his contemporaries were highly critical of Moore's work.  Several sources state that Moore was more concerned with quantity than quality in his works.  Others contend that, though quite prolific in his sonnetizing, the quality is such that "at least every other one is at least printable" (American, p. 462).  Moore analyzed his early work during the Fugitive reunion of 1956 and admittedthat "I didn't know what a lot of the things I was writing meant" (Vanderbilt, p.145).  Moore was known, on receiving criticism from other members of the fugitives, to "respond to (that) criticism of one poem by writing and submitting ten more" (Conklin, p. 17).

Merrill Moore's prolific career as a sonneteer was balanced by that as a psychiatrist.  During his professional life, Moore published a multitude of articles for medical and psychiatric journals as well as several books of poetry.  Moore was a regular contributor to trade publications such as Poetry and The Saturday Review of Literature.  Merrill Moore left a legacy of literary excellence for today's society.  Not only did he leave a tremendous volume of work, but also a new form of poetry, the American sonnet.  Perhaps Moore's appreciation of that medium can best be shown in his own words in "In Magic Words":

Wordsworth to the contrary notwithstanding,
Milton's and Shakespeare's statements also doubted:
A sonnet's force is not so easily routed
That flying one should not seek the safest landing.

As much as anything, a magic word
Is what a sonnet is, that quickly falls
If touched indelicately or shaken hard,
Or if it be reared too heavy or too tall.

Sonnets possess impertinence; they have bliss,
They require excitement in at least one line,
They need specific gravity and this
Especially is important—to be in focus;

Rarely a sonnet deserves to be exhibited;
Most of them should be (and they are) inhibited.
(Bender, p. 454)

This essay was submitted by a student of Judith Broadbent, a teacher at Austin Peay University in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.