Evening star., 1938-11-27
Champion Sonnet
Writer Is Boston
Physician
Composer Of $4,000 Also
Is on Stoff Of Harvard
Medical School
BY JOHN SELBY,

has written $4,000 sonnets," and first
thing you know your friends begin
surrounding you with butterfly nets
and soon you are on your way to
the hoosegow.
But they are wrong. There is a
man who has written $4,000 sonnets
and his name is DR.. Merrill Moore
Appropriately enough, he lives in
Boston, where his practice is in
psychiatry.
Laid lamb to lamb, these sonnets
would reach from Stratford- on
Avon, where another sonneteer once
held forth, far into the interior of
Yugoslavia or some place. But one
should not get the idea that they
are the product of a recluse who
scribbles his 14-line units from dawn
to dusk in the back end of an old
attic.
Far from it.
Leads Very Active Life.
DR.. Moore is only IS years old
He teaches at Harvard Medical
School, is on the staffs of numerous
hospitals, is director of two w. P A.
projects in Boston Syphylis and al
coholism), practices privately, has
written more than 20 medical papers
Of length and standing, belongs to
all sorts of associations and clubs,
including one called, quite remarka-
bly, THE Neurological Supper Club"
Also he came originally from Nash
vile. Tenn, where he was member
of the fugitive group" which wrote
lot, and included Allen Tate among
other members. Lastly, DR.. Moore
is married, has four children, lives
on an island at Squantum, near
Boston, and is a semi professional
swimmer.
Every year he, contests in the
famous 12-mile race from Charles
town to Boston Light. He may win
some day.
Will Publish Sonnets.
Meanwhile, December 8, he is pub
fishing what is said to be the largest
number of sonnets ever put between
the covers of a single book by a
single author. There will be 1000
sonnets in the book, one-flftieth of
his output. The largest single col
lection hitherto was Jesse Stuart's
The Man With the Bull Tongue
Plow' that contained 703.
DR.. Moore will call his work just
M" The IN" stands for Merrill
Moore and also is the Roman
numeral for 1000 Rockwell Kent,
who is one of the doctors best
friends, has done a frontispiece
which shows man doubtless an
Eskimo) collapsed in the front of
a boat. Even this drawing forms
an M.
But there will be subtitle for
the book. This reads "One Thou
sand Autobiographical Sonnets," and
that's what, in other circles, is called
the "tip-off" DR.. Moore is writing
his life into those sonnets, and he
finds lots to write about.
One room in his house is devoted
to his life in sonnet form. There
are so many he has to index them
by title and first line and cross index
them as well.
He does a dozen a day. sometimes
more, sometimes less. He is too busy
to sit down to desk and just write.
Sometimes he dictates them to his
wife, who. besides her duties as
amanuensis. mother. her social en-
gagements and all that, is camera
expert.
Oftener, however, DR.. Moore just
jots the sonnets down on theater
program, a prescription pad, the
margin of newspaper. He has
produced sonnets while waiting for
a light change. while having his
shoes polished, while shaving, while
watching a ball game, while sick
abed.
Mostly, he just writes them and
files them. He revises very seldom,
partly because the moment he starts
flddling with sonnet he gets ideas
for half a dozen more. It's hardly
safe to tamper with them, under
those conditions.
Although thoroughly orthodox in
medical way, with the best of con-
nections and all that, DR.. Moore
sometimes gets in bad with the more
mossy medicos because of his writing
They seem to resent it, he says, even
though he never mixes rhymes and
remedies.
Just the same, he can explain the
flood of medical men who do write,
and write well. It's caused by their
training in observation, he thinks,
and by their constant practice writ
ing case histories. You learn to use
English precisely and economically.
Father Was Novelist.
DR.. Moore comes justly by his
ability. His father was John Trot-
wood Moore, the Tennessee novelist
and historian. His father was, how
ever, a man who wrote in the old
school, which today we call senti-
mental-although he had humor and
was not afraid of research.
And the son, although he now
lives. breathes and at times even
speak in takes" of IA lines each,
is in no sense a sentimentalist. He
has even jazzed the sonnet form
some of his productions are more
like poetized speech from the street
than Shakespeare's product. If one
of the standard rhyme schemes does
not happen to fit, DR.. Moore simply
ignores rhyme schemes. Or makes
his own.
DR.. Moore is the kind of man who
Just naturally falls into curious pat
terms. For example, last year the
New England Journal of Medicine
published something of his neatly
entitled Gases of Attempted Suicide
in a General Hospital"
This paper broke into the news.
Before the echoes died DR.. Moore
had 2,50O letters from people over
the world who contemplated suicide.
It was tough spot for a doctor with
q conscience who was also too hu-
man to turn his back on a fellow
man in distress.
So he hired two extra secretaries
and spent two months answering
every letter carefully and individ-