Thoughts of Spoon River

I wonder just how we’re supposed to feel about Chase Henry? He was the “town drunkard” and seemingly quite proud of his place in the civic structure of Spoon River. And hugely tickled by his getting one over the “prudent and pious souls” symbolised here by the Catholic Church. How are we to feel about Chase Henry? To a certain extent, at least, we can’t help but feel a little bit tickled right along with him. To admit to a certain guilty pleasure at Chase’s one-upping the Catholic Church is one thing, to draw some deep philosophical meaning out of the circumstances is another. That Chase Henry would wish his burial next to the banker and his wife to have significance is only natural in a man who lived as a wastrel. This being Spoon River, however, we at least need to consider the real lesson to be learned. It could be, of course, as simple as the quartet of poems just encountered, previous to this one - a character lying in the womb of the earth, pointing a bony finger, either at...

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...

Amanda Barker’s epitaph is the third in a quartet of linked poems. Along with Cassius Hueffer, Serepta Mason and Constance Hately, Amanda Barker accuses the people of Spoon River of being blind to reality - wilfully or otherwise. Amanda addresses her epitaph to the ‘Traveler’, or any stranger who happens along as she likely feels, even in death, unable to speak to those who failed her so tragically in life. And, if they really were so willing to allow her husband’s hatred take the course it did, all for the sake of appearances, would there be any point in Amanda trying to reason with them now? The good people of Spoon River will go to any lengths to live the appearance of an up-standing, virtuous Middle American community, even if lives must be stunted (Serepta Masaon), lies must be told of the dead (Cassius Hueffer), meanness of spirit ignored as necessary (Constance Hately), and lives forfeited for the greater good (Amanda Barker). No wonder that Amanda Barker is reduced to spe...

There is a link between this epitaph and that of Cassius Hueffer, which immediately precedes it. This link is to be found in the use of the word “fool”, used in the same way in both poems. Hueffer accuses the engraver of his tombstone of being a fool, as Mason accuses the the townsfolk generally of being fools for lacking the wisdom to see the “ways of the wind” or perceive the “unseen forces” she claims govern life. It is a feature of Spoon River Anthology that there be short series of poems - sometimes members of a family offering differing perceptions of how things had been in life, sometimes individuals caught up in the same events accusing or defending. Hueffer and Mason are connected only in their bitterness for the townsfolk of Spoon River. But this link is vital to a full understanding of the poems. If each is taken separately, they appear little more than the whinings of the departed attempting one last time to get the living to listen. Together, though, they fo...

“They have chiseled on my stone…” Cassius Hueffer,   who “made warfare on life”, has finally been tamed by those who never managed to impose their idea of control over him while he lived. They have claimed him in death who, in life, went unswayed by their words, for he “could not cope with slanderous tongues”. Only now he is dead are they able to make him submit to their words, in the form of the epitaph “[g]raven by a fool!” Whatever kind of man Cassius Hueffer was, his importance to the community of Spoon River was such that they could not let him simply die and be rid of him. Even as they laid him in his grave, they did not give up on the need to reclaim him as one of their own. This man in whom the “elements were so mixed”, who could never succumb to a gentle life for fear that in so doing he would relinquish the freedom of the fight, had to be rebranded rather than merely discarded because a community in which he lived his life could never be the bastion of small t...

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 ...