Merrill Moore | |
|---|---|
 Merrill Moore in 1956 | |
| Born | (1903-09-11)September 11, 1903 Columbia, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Died | September 20, 1957(1957-09-20) (aged 54) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Education | Montgomery Bell Academy |
| Alma mater | Vanderbilt University |
| Occupation(s) | M.D., psychiatrist, poet |
| Parent(s) | John Trotwood Moore Mary Brown Daniel |
Merrill Moore (1903 – 1957) was an American psychiatrist and poet. Born and educated in Tennessee, he was a member of theFugitives. He taught neurology at theHarvard Medical School and published research about alcoholism. He was the author of many collections of poetry.
Moore was born in 1903 inColumbia, Tennessee.[1][2][3] His father,John Trotwood Moore, was a novelist and local historian who served as theState Librarian and Archivist from 1919 to 1929.[4] His paternal grandfather was a lawyer fromMarion, Alabama, who served in theConfederate States Army during theAmerican Civil War.[4]
Moore was educated atMontgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee,[1] graduating in 1920.[5] He attendedVanderbilt University, where he became a member of theSigma Chi fraternity.[6][7] He also joined theFugitives, a group of then unknown poets who met to read and criticize each other's poems.[3] He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1924.[3] He took an M.D. from theVanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1928.[3] He interned at theSaint Thomas Hospital in Nashville for a year.[2]
Moore was a psychiatrist in theEricksonian tradition. He taughtneurology at theHarvard Medical School and theBoston City Hospital.[3] He also conducted research on alcohol and addiction.[3] In a 1937 article published in theNew England Journal of Medicine, he argued that alcoholism had become rampant in the United States,[8] and he called for the establishment of special wards for alcoholics in hospitals.[9] Two years later, in the same journal, he argued that the heavier an individual, the less likely they were to feel drunk.[10] By 1943, in the Boston number of theMedical Clinics of North America, he argued that adult neurosis and alcoholism could be prevented if parents ensured children matched the skills of their peers and never "go off the track of normal development".[11] He also published articles in medical journals about "drug addiction, suicide, venereal disease [...], the psychoneurosis of war, migraine headaches."[1] Meanwhile, Moore also treated patients likeRobert Frost's daughter, who had paranoia and depression.[12]
During World War II, Moore served as a psychiatrist in theUnited States Army'sBougainville Campaign as well as in New Zealand.[3] On September 22, 1942, Moore gave a speech aboutAdolf Hitler'sMein Kampf entitledWhat Hitler means in "Mein Kampf" at theFitzsimons Army Medical Center inAurora, Colorado; a year later, it was reprinted inMilitary Surgeon.[1][13][clarification needed] Moore served as Lieutenant-Colonel inNanking, where he was "director of medical operations".[1] He was the recipient of theBronze Star Medal for his war service.[3]
After the war, Moore played a key behind-the-scenes role in theEzra Pound controversy, as a member of a group of literary men who saw to it that the modernist icon escaped a treason trial for his radio propaganda in support of Mussolini. Moore was a close friend of one of the psychiatrists on a diagnostic panel that found Pound unfit to stand trial.[14]
Throughout his career Moore producedsonnets in a very high volume. Estimates vary but by 1935,Louis Untermeyer had counted 25,000 sonnets in Moore's files, according to a Time Magazine article that year;[15] just over two years later, a 1938 Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker put Moore's total production of sonnets at 50,000.[16]
Moore discovered his affinity for the sonnet form while still in secondary school and is said to have learned shorthand during college in order to be able to write more sonnets between classes. Although some of his work, such as the posthumous quatrain collectionThe Phoenix and the Bees, is in other forms, the poet-psychiatrist wrote and archived his poems in a dedicated home office he called his "sonnetorium." Some of his books, likeCase Record from a Sonnetorium orMore Clinical Sonnets, were illustrated byEdward Gorey.[17][18]
It was Moore who put the youngRobert Lowell in contact with literary men includingFord Madox Ford,Allen Tate andJohn Crowe Ransom, and who encouraged Lowell to become a student of Ransom after Lowell's sudden violent break with his family and departure from Harvard.[19][20]
Moore married to Ann Leslie Nichol in 1930.[1] Together they had four children: Adam, John, Leslie, and Hester. He published articles aboutconchology.[1]
Moore died of cancer on September 21, 1957, in Boston, Massachusetts.[1][21][22] He was 54.[3]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Moore published some 150 medical and psychological papers on alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, venereal disease, the organization and administration of hospitals, Adolf Hitler, the psychoneurosis of war, migraine headaches, and other subjects, including conchology, the study of shells.
Across the street, in the Sigma Chi fraternity, he found a distracted seventeen-year-old named Merrill Moore, who was well on the way to becoming the most prolific sonneteer in history.
Robert Frost merrill moore.
ezra pound merrill moore overholser.
