Sentimental Song Book

Julia A. Moore earned the title "Sweet Singer of Michigan" with verses so spectacularly, unintentionally hilarious that she became a literary legend. Her poetry contains questionable grammar, clumsily thudding rhymes, and a peculiar blend of tearful sentimentality and earnest moralizing that leaves readers simultaneously moved and howling with laughter. These are poems about dead children, broken hearts, and the virtue of temperance, written with the deadly seriousness of a Victorian poet who never once suspected the reader might be kidding. Mark Twain mocked her mercilessly. Ogden Nash credited her as a primary inspiration. Today, the Flint Public Library hosts an annual Julia A. Moore Poetry Festival. This is the book that launched a tradition of celebrating magnificent failure, the kind of bad that circles back around to brilliant. Perfect for anyone who delights in art so earnest it becomes comedy, or anyone who has ever loved something profoundly ridiculous.