1. The Hill

There can be no mistaking Edgar Lee Masters’ intention with the first poem of ‘Spoon River Anthology’ – we, the reader, are to be introduced to as wide a range of characters as the poem’s structure deems practicable. These characters, and their fates, are clearly meant to be representative of what is to come in the next 243 poems of the Anthology.

Being the introductory poem to an Anthology such as this, it is appropriate to introduce the rather unique setting, its significance being that, for many of the characters, it is the only place from which they could possibly feel free enough to speak. Some, we know, would never have spoken quite so openly before taking up their place on the hill – the embarrassed Zenas Witt, for instance, who would stammer his lessons and forget all he had studied, could never have spoken as eloquently if not lying in his grave, finally free of his nerves.

The Hill, then, is the graveyard of the small town of Spoon River. Masters lays out his free-verse poem in such a way that its lines reflect the row upon row of graves on the hill:

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,

The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?

…

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,

The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one? -

These lines serve to introduce the characters with a brief sketch of each. But they also lay out the characters in the rows they occupy in the graveyard. We should not, however, be fooled into thinking that they have somehow achieved a closeness in death that they may not have had in life.

Immediately after being introduced to the characters, we are told how each died:

One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge

The image of the rows of graves has disappeared now. Instead, we have the loneliness of each individual grave. Masters’ use of the anaphora – the repetition of ‘One’ at the beginning of each line – emphasizes the way in which each character lies alone. Just as in life, so in death, so close to their neighbours, yet as far apart as it is possible to be.

It might be said that this is the overwhelmingly dominant idea that runs throughout ‘Spoon River Anthology’ – the juxtaposition of closeness and distance, not just as a source of the bitterness and enmity that appears all too often, but the simple truth of life and human relationships. No matter how close one person is with another there remains an infinite space ever present.

Masters returns to this idea in the final lines of these early stanzas.

The repetition of ‘All, all’ in the final line of six of the seven stanzas makes the simple point that if there is one thing that we do share it is death – all, no matter one’s standing in life, will one day occupy a place on the hill. Though this may not be an overly cheerful thought, it does beg the question as to why we don’t make more of the time we have together, why we spend so much of our time in petty squabbles and outright murderous behaviour? Masters, almost in passing, challenges us to be better human beings.

Then we have more repetition - ‘sleeping’ or ‘sleeping, sleeping, sleeping’. Obviously, a euphemism for death, this rhythmic repetition, in itself almost lulling us to sleep, is also somewhat ironic, as it reminds us that while we might believe there to be a ‘final peace’ to be found in the grave, we are soon to be rudely awakened to reality. In the very next poem, the first so-called epitaph, named after a character called Hod Putt, we hear from a man who, fired by jealousy, commits a robbery during which he accidentally kills ‘a traveler’. For this crime Hod is hanged. It must be noted that Hod does claim to be sleeping peacefully, though not without recognizing the irony of his lying side by side with the man who stirred his jealousy in the first place.

It appears that Masters would have us realise that those who fail to find peace in life will fail to find it in death. Our life – and death – is shaped by who we are.

After the careful structure of the first four stanzas, Masters then, in true free-verse fashion, alters the poems’ arrangement. Stanzas five and six seem far more varied than what we have encountered up to now. Stanza five has five lines, while stanza six has only four. Stanza five begins with ‘Where’, as do one and three, initially suggesting a continuation of the previous structure. But, after this one word, everything changes.

Rather than a string of five characters as before, we meet a couple – Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily. We should note that males and females are no longer separated into gendered stanzas. In the second line we have another two characters, again one male and the other female. This change upholds the overall theme that death comes for all, no matter who or when – there is no order to death.

In these two stanzas, the last-named character is one Major Walker. Stanza six identifies groups rather than individuals – ‘dead sons from the war’ and ‘daughters whom life had crushed’. Death decimates.

With stanza seven, we have another change. We are no longer meeting with strings of characters or amorphous groups. Now we focus upon one very specific individual, Fiddler Jones.

In a general sense, this is the point to which the whole poem has been moving throughout. After all, the following 243 poems will mainly be spoken by individuals – excepting poem 196 which is spoken by Many Soldiers. So, as we reach the end of the introductory poem, The Hill, it is right that our attention is brought to focus on the particular rather than the general. The question is not why the poem ends in this fashion but why this particular character?

In the order of the poems, Fiddler Jones– poem 60 – is contrasted with Cooney Potter in poem 59. Potter, who starts out with forty acres, acquires one thousand before his death at 60 – another reference to Fiddler Jones, maybe? Whether this is admirable or not, it influences our reading of the character in the very next poem, who also has forty acres and acquires no more. Potter acquires land and, presumably, wealth, through hard work – ‘by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters/From dawn to dusk’. Fiddler Jones, on the contrary, spends his life ‘Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-loor”’.

There is a further not insignificant contrast between these two men. Whereas Potter died at sixty, Jones lives to ninety. And this despite his somewhat debauched lifestyle: ‘Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,/Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven’. If life is a good thing, and surely the dead would think so, then we must be careful not to simply dismiss Fiddler Jones as a wastrel.

On the contrary, Masters seems to imply that it is, in fact, Jones we should take as our exemplar rather than Potter.

This is an anthology of epitaphs, spoken by those who lie beneath the grave stones upon which they are etched. If nothing else, then, we cannot ever forget that life is a limited span – whether Jones’ ninety years, or Potter’s sixty or Zenas Witt’s sixteen or so years. This being the case, we should, if not quite to Jones’ extent, make the most of the time we have, enjoying the ‘fish-frys’ and the ‘horse-races’ while taking time to listen to the likes of Abe Lincoln, who acknowledges his dependence on others.

Ultimately, we will lie alone in our graves. Whether we lie there stewing in the bitter juices of a wasted life or satisfied that life was good will be determined only by how we lived. Confronted with an eternity of aloneness, why waste the chance to share in the closeness of others during life?

‘The Hill, is a masterful opening to an anthology that will go on to explore many of its themes.