"C" is for Coogler, John Gordon (1865-1901)

"C" is for Coogler, John Gordon (1865-1901). Poet. Coogler achieved notoriety in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as one of South Carolina’s, and the South’s, most famous and arguably worst poets. Through 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. In his disparaging review of southern literature, “Sahara of the Bozart,” literary critic H.L. Mencken began with the Cooglerian couplet: “Alas! For the South, her books have grown fewer—She never was given to literature.” Gradually the term “Cooglerism” entered the dictionary—meaning a solemn absurdity. In 1974 Claude and Irene Neuffer reprinted Coogler’s publication, Purely Original Verse. Literary critics and national columnists of the day celebrated John Gordon Coogler’s revival as much as Mencken had years earlier.