Edgar Lee Masters
1868-1950

    LIFE:

     Homes:

      Occupations:       Chronology: Chronology taken from  http://gsbkmc.uchicago.edu/parker/museum97/masters1.htm
 

Issues and Themes:

Edgar Lee Masters was a man of dedication to his work.  He began his career as a lawyer and was opposed to the war.  In his autobiography, Across Spoon River, he said: "I had read enough in the papers to know that war was avoidable and I resolved to have nothing to do with it."  He centered his work around the study of the history of the Constitution and the US republican form of government, and after this, he wrote a play, poetry, and some essays on imperialism, although he opposed imperialism.  After these writings, Masters was favored by the anti-imperialists, but his practice began to deteriorate.  He was offered a position with Clarence Darrow, a well-known civil rights lawyer.  He is quoted in his autobiography as saying:

I was known over Chicago and Illinois by this time as the author of the constitutional articles and political essays published in the Chronicle, and in Tom Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine; and also as the author of a pamphlet entitled 'The Constitution and Our Insular Possessions,' which had made the conservative lawyers of Chicago indignant at me.  Thus my life had moved in such a way that I was unwelcome among the lawyers who were doing a large business, and there was no place for me to go but to the radicals.
Masters then gathered some of his writings and pamphlets and he published them as The New Star Chambers and Other Essays in 1904.  Some of his poems were also published at this time.  Masters was well known for his poems about Midwest life, which is where Spoon River Anthology comes in.  This work has been compared to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass for its literary significance. (www.outfitters.com)

Masters used examples of his friends and neighbors from Lewistown and Petersburg to portray the characters of Spoon River Anthology, along with events from his childhood.  The work is a compilation of 214 poems about the lives of 244 people who are now deceased of Spoon River, Illinois.  It tells about secrets of their lives.  Most of his poems were free verse with no obvious poetic devices such as rhyme or meter.


Work:
                                                                               The Hill
Where are Elder, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
              The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
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 toiling for children and wife--
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Ell, Kate, Ma, Liz and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud,
the happy one?--
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in search for heart's desire,
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ell and Kate and Ma--
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Tommy Cinched and Sieving Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution?--
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
They brought them dead sons from the war,
And daughters whom life had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying--
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife not kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo!  he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Claire's Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.
Taken from  Spoon River Anthology
Explication:  This poem was published by Masters in 1915 and is one of many in the collection Spoon River Anthology.  "The Hill" is the first poem in the book, which is a collection of poems about the deceased members of Spoon River, Illinois.  Many of these people were outcasts, while others were "high society" members.  The part would be spoken by an anonymous person, because they are talking about many of the members of the community, their secrets, and then telling that they are in the graveyard, which would also be considered "the hill."  It also mentions memories of the town of Spoon River, such as the fish-frys and the horse-races.

For a picture, view this site:    http://home.ican.net/~fjzwick/masters/

Bibliography:


Written by Hope Layell, student, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, 1998
Edited by: Mark Canada, Ph.D.