Spoon River Anthology - the Bittersweet veiw of Edgar Lee Masters

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer--and if so, why? - Bennett Cerf

Edgar Lee Masters was a lawyer, cum poet, novelist and playwright whose most famous work - Spoon River Anthology - is a series of auto-epithets (voices from the grave) done in free verse of the mythological prairie town of Spoon River. It is a work filled with the pathos and humor and irony of any small town where the lives of its citizens interact and intersect for the better and the worse. To wit:

Amelia Garrick

Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush

In a forgotten place near the fence

Where the thickets from Siever's woods

Have crept over, growing sparsely.

And you, you are a leader in New York,

The wife of a noted millionaire,

A name in the society columns,

Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps

By the mirage of distance.

You have succeeded,

I have failed

In the eyes of the world.

You are alive, I am dead.

Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;

And I know that lying here far from you,

Unheard of among your great friends

In the brilliant world where you move,

I am really the unconquerable power over your life

That robs it of complete triumph.

And like so many gifted and talented writers - Masters proved successful in his professional life but less so in his personal one. He married Helen Jenkins in 1898 and had a son the following year. From 1903-1908 he had a law partnership with the famous Clarence Darrow. He went on to write plays and have two more children. In 1909 he had a torrid (is there any other kind?) affair with the artist Tennessee Mitchell who later married Sherwood Anderson. Masters' wife learned of the affair but would not divorce him. Spoon River Anthology came out in 1915 and two years later he left his wife and family. In 1926 he married Ellen Coyne a woman 36 years younger. He went on to write many more poems and biographies and novels - none of which received or garnered him the attention that Spoon River did. His health began failing in the 1940's and he passed away in 1950. In the end, his works both celebrated and satirized the lives of small town folks. It is not uncommon for most writers, poets or otherwise to have a love hate relationship with their subjects. What better to write about than that which stirs your soul? All writers - especially aspiring ones - should require of themselves to read Spoon River Anthology.

Stuff that happened on this day in History:

Alfred Hitchcock bit the dust.

First edition of Roget's Thesaurus was published (1852)

Rubber was given a patent in 1812 - enough said already about its impact on birthrates and all that.

Henry James, Transatlantic Sketches is published (1875) - another page turner from the old master!

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was born (1863) - only he didn't know he was a tycoon at the time. He just knew he was hungry and his diaper needed changing. So in that regard he was just like the rest of us - until he became very rich of course, then he stopped being like the rest of us.

Rodney King is acquitted of bashing his skull against the batons of several L.A. police officers.

From ye olde vault whose key is tied around the neck of Big Sal, the following poem:

Easy Rider

The first time I saw
Easy Rider, I wept.

The woman with me
Looked at me strangely

& later we went to her
place and made love

And I felt like Peter
Fonda when he got

Shot off his motorcycle

...do well, be kind, kiss someone like you mean it.

www.authorbillbrooks.com