Thoughts of Spoon River

And so the final poem in the ‘Chase Henry Trilogy’. Chase Henry accepted his role as "town drunkard" and warned the Protestants, those "prudent and pious souls", of achieving, in a sense, the Devil's own goals for the sake of crossing the Catholics. Harry Carey Goodhue, in like manner to the Protestants, would have his legacy recognised as one thing while, in actual fact, leaving behind something else altogether different. And now we have Judge Somers, the "most erudite of lawyers" and maker of "the greatest speech / The court-house ever heard", lying in an unmarked grave, his life not having produced the rewards he thought it he deserved. Chase Henry recognises that he benefitted from the rivalry that exists between the Protestants and the Catholics but is not into thinking himself other than he really was. He is well aware that he "lived in shame" and his good fortune was not earned. In answer to Judge Somers' question, ...

If we have read the three previous poems carefully and recognised their unity of purpose, there should be nothing unexpected in this ninth epitaph of Constance Hately - not even the twist of the final two lines. As any good mini-series should, the last three poems have been building to this dramatic climax. Indeed, we can say that this poem gets to the very heart of the whole anthology. Even this early in the anthology, it is good to finally have a confession of sin from a figure of some standing in the Spoon River community; one who was generally praised for her self-sacrifice by her neighbours. It is a timely confession, for we might be in danger of misreading the previous poems without it. It lends support to the voices of Cassius Hueffer, Serepta Morgan and Amanda Barker, letting us know that they are not mere moaners, bewailing their lot from beyond the grave. What these epitaphs have in common is the nature of the community’s consistent misjudgement of what is to be val...