Poet. J. Gordon Coogler achieved notoriety in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as one of South Carolina\u2019s, and the South\u2019s, most famous and arguably worst poets. He was born on December 3, 1865, in Richland County near the town of Doko (now Blythewood). By the mid-1880s he was living in Columbia and working as a journeyman printer. He printed, at his own expense, his first volume of poetry around this time. He quickly followed it with two more volumes and soon established himself as a poet with appeal to the masses. Through tireless self-promotion, Coogler and his poetry garnered the attention of readers and reviewers from across the nation, who found his work entertaining if not aesthetic. Facetious reviews and parodies of his work found their way into dozens of newspapers and other periodicals. By 1895 Coogler had opened his own printing shop on Lady Street in Columbia, where he advertised \u201cPoems written while you wait.\u201d In 1897 Coogler printed a one-volume edition of his complete works, Purely Original Verse, <\/em>which sold more than five thousand copies, mostly to customers from outside the South. By then, according to Columbia\u2019s State <\/em>newspaper, he had become \u201cby a freak of fate . . . the most widely celebrated citizen of Columbia.\u201d He died in Columbia on September 9, 1901, and was buried in Elmwood Cemetery.<\/p>\n Coogler\u2019s verse received tongue-in-cheek praise from literary critics of the day from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, and London. The writer and critic H. L. Mencken secured literary immortality for Coogler in 1916 when he referred to Coogler as \u201cthe last bard of Dixie\u201d in his disparaging review of southern literature, \u201cSahara of the Bozart.\u201d Mencken began the review with the Cooglerian couplet \u201cAlas! For the South, her books have grown fewer\u2013She never was given to literature.\u201d Gradually the term \u201cCooglerism\u201d entered the language, meaning a solemn absurdity.<\/p>\n Coogler\u2019s poetic couplets preceded the inane greeting-card rhymes of the twentieth century, and as such he was ahead of his time. Coogler died believing the praise to be genuine and had included several of his reviews in his newer editions. He addressed his critics in verse, adding with humility: \u201cYou\u2019ll never see this head too large for my hat \/ You may watch it and feel it as oft as you choose \/ But you\u2019ll learn, as millions of people have learned \/ Of my character and name thro my innocent muse.\u201d<\/p>\n Coogler achieved a poetic revival in 1974 with the reprint of Purely Original Verse <\/em>by Claude and Irene Neuffer. Literary critics and national columnists of the day enjoyed the revival as much as Mencken had years earlier. Orders for copies were received from across the country and across the world. The conservative editor Robert Tyrrell began honoring the year\u2019s worst book with the J. Gordon Coogler Award. Observing the renewed enthusiasm for the \u201cbard of the Congaree\u201d in the 1980s, the columnist William F. Buckley concluded, \u201cCoogler, tonight, sleeps with the immortals.\u201d<\/p>\n Cohen, Henry Hennig. \u201cJ. Gordon Coogler and His Purely Original Verse.\u201d Master\u2019s thesis, University of South Carolina, 1948.<\/p>\n Coogler, J. Gordon. Papers. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.<\/p>\n \u2013\u2013\u2013. Purely Original Verse. <\/em>1897. Reprint, Columbia, S.C.: Vogue, 1974. LaBorde, Rene. \u201cCoogler Revisited.\u201d Southern Partisan <\/em>3 (winter 1983): 31\u201333, 41.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poet. J. Gordon Coogler achieved notoriety in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as one of South Carolina\u2019s, and the South\u2019s, most famous and arguably worst poets. He was born on December 3, 1865, in Richland County near the town of Doko (now Blythewood). By the mid-1880s he was living in Columbia and working as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-3180","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-c","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-industry-and-the-gilded-age-1878-1889","ecms-literature","ecms-midlands","ecms-popular-culture","ecms-reconstruction-1866-1877","ecms-richland-county","ecms-turn-of-the-century-1890-1913"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n