Thoughts of Spoon River

If ‘ Robert Fulton Tanner ’ chooses to begin with a conditional , just as I have as I begin to write in my home today. Robert Fulton Tanner is incapable of seeing a thought through to its end. He begins correctly enough, then wanders off in musings of his own misfortune. Tanner’s epitaph opens with a grand thought, touching on the very nature of human life, which is never seen through to a logical conclusion as the speaker is distracted by smaller, more personal matters. Tanner fancies himself as a man of vast potential, great achievements await in his future, if only “the monstrous ogre Life” would not bring all he does to ruin. Something – or, more likely, someone – has damaged Robert Fulton Tanner, to the extent that he feels unworthy of his own dreams. Unfortunately for Tanner, he might not be quite the man to impact the world in any significant way he appears to think himself. He might dream of marrying a ‘woman with money’, of acquiring ‘[p]restige, place, or power in the wor...

Despite his name, Fletcher McGee is no straight arrow. Whatever kind of man Fletcher might have been before his wife, Ollie McGee , took his “life by hours’, when we encounter him in his epitaph, he is a broken man – the arrow has snapped. Where Hod Putt is the very epitome of his name, Fletcher McGee is a weak man who has allowed life to defeat him. Unfortunately, we know nothing of what other factors may have beaten down this rather pathetic figure, for Edgar Lee Masters gives no back-story, either here or in the previous poem ‘spoken’ by Fletcher’s wife. This dearth of detail serves two purposes – one localized, the other universal – one microscopic, the other macroscopic. Fletcher and Ollie McGee are consumed by their hatred; their whole world has become little more than the causing and suffering of mutual pain. As they lie in their graves, wherein one would imagine they should be beyond the petty cares of life, yet they remain fixated on each other - on who did what, on who ...

The narrators of ‘ Spoon River Anthology ’ are in a unique position – though dead, yet they are given one last opportunity to speak. But even the dead have their own purposes; whether it be the revealing of a murder (as in ‘ Amanda Barker ’), anguish at an injustice (‘ Doctor Meyers ’), or the lasting power of love (‘ William and Emily ’). The dead must have their say. One would imagine that being dead would lend itself to objectivity and truth. What need is there for the dead to lie? Throughout the Anthology, however, Edgar Lee Masters makes it abundantly clear that as in life, so in death. Death doesn’t make us honest. ‘ Ollie McGee ’ is a bitter woman. She would have us believe that her husband, ‘ Fletcher McGee ’ treated her horribly mean while she was alive so that now, in death, she gains some satisfaction from his continued misery. Though lying in her grave, she is able to somehow observe her husband and relish his decline, noting that he too will soon die. This, she says, i...

We cannot but take notice when an Anthology of ‘spoken’ epitaphs opens, after the introductory first poem, with the words, “Here I lie…”. These words must cause us to ponder the veracity of what we are about to ‘hear’. Inevitably, because the poems are spoken from each individual’s point of view, there is bound to be discrepancies, contradictions and, possibly, flat-out-lies. Hod Putt appears to be saying something straightforwardly simple: “Here I am in my grave, next to that of Old Bill Pierol.” As we read the poem, however, we begin to realise the irony implies things are not quite so simple as we first thought. Notice, for instance, that Hod doesn’t actually place himself in a grave. Old Bill Piersol is in a grave and Hod tells us he lies close by. It is evident that Hod is indeed in his grave, though he refuses to be quite so specific about his own location. It is easier for Hod to acknowledge Old Bill Piersol’s situation than his own. Despite his matter-of-fact relating of ...

Even a quick perusal of the titles of the 243 epitaphs of ‘ Spoon River Anthology ’ reveals a staggering male bias. Just from the titles alone, without reading the underlying poems, there are a whopping 187 poems readily identifiable as ‘male’. This, in contrast to just 54 poems recognisably ‘female’ and, of these, ten of the women have no given name, being referred to only in relation to their marital status. Even in death, it seems, the womenfolk lacked a voice. If we take Masters at his word when he says he would “draw the macrocosm by portraying the microcosm”, we can read this dearth of female voices as reflective of the time and place rather than a sign of misogyny on the poet’s part. That there are so many women who lack a given name of their own – Mrs. Benjamin Pantier , Mrs. Charles Bliss and Mrs. George Reece among others – is not a sign that Edgar Lee Masters had a policy of ‘ disappearing ’ women from the register of life so much as a reflection of the reality...

Edgar Lee Masters ‘Spoon River Anthology’ (1915) In the opening poem of ‘ Spoon River Anthology ’, Edgar Lee Masters mentions a female character by the name of Sevigne Houghton. This is the only mention of this particular character as she, like many mentioned in ‘ The Hill ’, has no epitaph of her own. Nevertheless, she should not pass unnoticed. ‘Sevigne’ is not, it seems, a given name. It’s most well-known usage is as part of the title of a revered French writer of letters from the 17 th Century – Marie de Rabutin-Chantel, marquise de Sévigné . The Sévigné of which she is the marquise is an area of Northwestern France – Cesson-Sévigné, a residential area for the middle-class. But, apparently, even in France, it is not used as a given name. The closest variant that is so used is the Lithuanian ‘ Svajonė ’, which means ‘dream’. Given that Sevigne Houghton, along with all the other characters mentioned in this poem, is ‘sleeping on the hill’, it may not be accidental that Mas...

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-...