The Sentimental Song Book

Julia A. Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan," is today considered one of the true luminaries of bad poetry. Her verse, with its questionable grammar, clumsily contrived rhymes and its unique mixture of rigorous moralism and sentimentality, attracted wide-spread mockery from the press and the public, but also the attention of literary celebrities like Mark Twain. Ogden Nash, the comic poet, claimed that Moore was a major source of inspiration. Today the Flint Public Library in Michigan holds the Julia A. Moore Poetry Festival to celebrate bad poetry. - Summary by Algy Pug