J. Gordon Coogler

J. Gordon Coogler (1865-1901), also called "John Brown Gordon Coogler" and "James Gordon Coogler," was an American poet who achieved notoriety during his lifetime as a prolific producer of bad verse. Essayist H.L. Mencken is credited with assuring Coogler's lasting fame as a poetaster by mocking him as an example of the supposedly poor state of arts and letters in the American South.

Life
Coogler was born in South Carolina during the last year of the American Civil War and spent his entire life in that state. After his father's death in 1880, Coogler went to work to support his mother and two sisters. He opened a shop advertising "Poems Written While You Wait." Although his verses attracted ridicule, he sought to promote his business by distributing self-published booklets of original poems. According to his obituary in the Columbia State newspaper, Coogler published five thousand short collections of original verse during his lifetime, besides two versions of his book-length collection titled Purely Original Verse.

Coogler's verse attracted mocking attention from prominent American magazines, including Puck and Munsey's Magazine. Coogler once complained in verse about what he considered the unfairness of literary critics: Oh you critics! — If an author errs in a single line,

That line you’ll surely quote,

And will give it as a sample fair

Of all he ever wrote.

Legacy
Nearly two decades after Coogler's death, H.L. Mencken selected the following brief poem as the motto of his 1920 essay "The Sahara of the Bozart": Alas! for the South, her books have grown fewer—

She never was much given to literature. Mencken went on to mock southern literature by crowning Coogler as "the last bard of Dixie."

From the 1890s into the 20th century, newspapers quoted that unintentionally humorous couplet, often from memory and in garbled form. Little else about Coogler was remembered besides the one couplet and his identity as a southerner.

In the late 20th century conservative political commentator R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. invented the annual J. Gordon Coogler Award as a booby prize for the "worst book of the year." The announcement of the prize has appeared annually in conservative organs including Human Events and The American Spectator. According to literary critic Bryan Giemza, other "mock-serious Coogler societies" exist and grant awards for bad writing.

The personal papers of J. Gordon Coogler are housed at the University of South Carolina.

Publiction

 * Purely Original Verse, 5 editions (1891-1897).
 * Purely Original Verse: Complete Works, and a Number of New Productions, in One Volume, 2 editions (1897