Merrill Moore - (1903-1957)

Columbia

By Monica Kent
Tennessee State University, Tennessee

Read another essay on Merrill Moore written by Tennessee student William W. Applegarth.

I.  Introduction

Dr. Merrill Moore's writings were both criticized and praised.  Despite everything he became a well-known psychiatrist and author of many poems and sonnets.  From the beginning of a life with loving parents, into a life with a wonderful wife and children, Merrill Moore went from a supportive family, to a extensive education and onto the greatness of having the pleasure of being noted as a great writer of both sonnets and poems.

II.  Biography

Merrill Moore was born September 11, 1903 at Columbia, Tennessee.  His father was John Trotwood Moore also a Tennessee poet and his mother was Mary Brown Daniel Moore.  He was three when his family moved to Nashville, attended public schools and prepared for college at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Once in college he rediscovered science and decided that his scientific interests could best be expressed in medicine.  Merrill decided to become a psychiatrist while he was still an undergraduate.  He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, receiving the degree of bachelor of arts in 1924 and doctor of medicine in 1928.  He married Ann Nichol of Nashville, Tennessee in 1930.  Mr. Moore fathered four children from this marriage; three sons, Adam, John, and Leslie, born respectively in 1931, 1933, 1935, and one daughter, Hester, born in 1937. 

Swimming was one of Merrill's favorite hobbies along with writing.  The family's home was at 39 East Springfield Street, in Boston and in the summer months 309 Bellevue Road in Squantum, Massachusetts.  He had much interest in writing as an avocation and was a member of the Fugitive Group that published the Fugitive, which was a poetry magazine, in Nashville, Tennessee from 1922 to 1926 and Fugitives, An Anthology of Verse in 1928, during his college days at Vanderbilt University.   Through the Fugitive, a magazine of poetry published for 3 years at Nashville, the group left its mark on present day though in the South.   Moore is the author of several books of poetry and a volume of 1000 sonnets published in the fall of 1938.

Moore's clinical training consisted of interning at Saint Thomas Hospital, 1928-1929, Neurological House Officer from 1929-1930 and Resident Neurological Physician from 1930-1931 at Boston City Hospital.  Moore moved on to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital as Assistant Physician from 1931-1932 and Commonwealth Fellow from 1932-1935. 

From 1933-1934 Moore was Graduate Assistant in the Psychiatric Clinic (Neurological Outpatient Department) at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Once again at Boston City Hospital Moore was Junior Visiting Physician from 1934-1935. In 1931 he began his Psychoanalytic training with the late Dr. William Herman for three years and continued with Dr. Hanns Sachs of Boston from 1934-1938.  Moore's teaching experience was in association with Dr. Stanley Cobb at the Harvard Medical School, Dr. C. Macfie Campbell and Dr. H. C. Solomon at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and Dr. Tracy Jackson Putnam of the Neurological Unit at the Boston City Hospital.  Moore's teaching consisted of Teaching Fellow in Neurology, Assistant in Neuropathology, Research Fellow in Psychiatry, Instructor in Psychiatry and Associate in Psychiatry. 

Moore's clinical work consisted of Assistant Visiting Neurologist, Director W. P. A. Alcoholism Survey, and Director W. P. A. Syphilis Project all at Boston City Hospital from 1936-1938. Consulting Neurologist and Psychiatrist at Chelsea Marine Hospital a United States Public Health Service from 1936-1938, and staff connections with the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain.  He was associated with Dr. Arlie V. Bock as Psychiatric Assistant in the Department of Hygiene at Harvard College from 1936-1938.  Since 1935 he had been engaged in private practice of psychiatry at 384 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts in association with a group of psychiatrists.

III.  Literary Works and Critics

Moore's poetry has rhythm and sometimes made no sense at all.  As well the sonnets and the pictures that depicted the words of the sonnets were rather amusing. Moore is a man after my own heart from all that I have discovered about him.  To quote him, "I encourage my children to do things with their hands and make themselves useful around the house.  I believe work does more than psychiatry can to justify God's ways to man." Moore used imitation from his work as a physician in the sonnet in Merrill Moore and The American Sonnet.   The poem "Ego" is somewhat confusing in its meaning and flows in points whereas in other points it sort of bumps along but over all it was quite enjoyable.  For instance, one line of this particular piece "I am what I most hate And love what I most hate; I am early at being both, Both early and too late" (Moore, 1938, p. 7).

Several different people had much to say about Dr. Merrill Moore's writings.  Some had nothing except praise for his works and other wrote repressing comments about his eloquent poems and sonnets.

Merrill Moore does not compose his sonnets he improvises them.  He dedicates them to his wife, jots them down in shorthand between cases, forms them driving home during pauses in traffic while the lights change from red to green.  The first batch of one thousand revealed the Dr. Moore had little taste about his own poems and less selective ability.  He seemed to depend on three or four friends whenever he contemplated publishing a volume…and what about the quality of the sonnets themselves?  They are, as I have implied, uneven.  Many could be improved by a closer scrutiny of the material; many more are spoiled by flat phrases and feeble conclusions.  But every other sonnet is, at least, printable; one out of every ten sonnets is novel and arresting; and one out of every twenty is distinguished by its power and depth of utterance.  At the lowest count, then, Merrill Moore has written over twelve hundred sonnets, any score of which might make a poet's reputation.  And Dr. Moore is at the beginning of his thirties, in the flush of his creative energies.  He may well publish, in a series of cumulative columns, a transcript of our times at once objective and analytical—a Comedie Humaine written entirely in sonnets.  I hope to live to read it. (Untermeyer, 1935, p.3-6)

"Dr. Moore's sonnets are free even to bursting the bonds of fourteen lines.  They are free in that they accept no restraints but the thought that inspired them." (Glover, 1954, p. 2).

This essay was submitted by a student of Judith Broadbent, a teacher at Tennessee State University in Tennessee.