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| Edgar Lee Masters as a young man. |
Edgar Lee Masters was the author of one of the greatest single volumes of American poetry ever—The
Spoon River Anthology. That book
in which the denizens of a small 19th Century Illinois village graveyard
tell their stories, is still a shock
and an eye opener for anyone who bought into the Disney version of small town life as a kind of perfect idyll.
Masters
was born on August 23, 1868 in Kansas where
his father had briefly established a
law practice. When that failed the family moved back to his grandparents farm near Petersburg
in Menard County, Illinois. In 1880 the family moved again to nearby Lewistown where the boy attended high school and showed an interest in both writing and following his father’s shaky footsteps in the law. He had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News—a Democratic challenger to the dominance and hegemony in the state of the Republican
Chicago Tribune.
In
the late 1880’s he attended Knox
Academy, the prep school for Knox
College but was forced to drop out
when his family could no longer support
him. After that he read law at his father’s law office. His dad was the village Freethinker and thus something of an outcast. The practice
revolved around the margins of local
life, petty civil cases for
those who could not afford the
lawyers who hobnobbed with the judges and bankers, criminal cases,
divorces, anything that exposed the underside of the community. It was an eye-opening experience.
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| Edgar Lee Masters' boyhood home in Lewistown, Illinois |
After
passing the Bar, young Masters hot footed it out of town to Chicago in 1893 where he hoped to
advance both his legal and writing careers. He went into practice with Kickham Scanlan and began to publish poetry under the name Dexter Wallace.
In
1898 he married the daughter of a prominent lawyer and began
a family that grew to three children
including a daughter Marsha who grew
up to be a poet and a son Hilary who
became a novelist. But the union grew stormy due to Master’s extramarital affairs.
In
1903 Masters went into partnership with
Clarence Darrow, already noted as a top labor and defense attorney. They were
united in their Democratic politics,
instinctive radicalism, Free
thought, and admiration for the
labor Democrat hero, Governor John Peter
Altgeld. As a junior partner in the firm, master handled mostly routine criminal
and civil cases for the poor, often pro
bono.
Despite
an amicable beginning, the
partnership foundered in 1908 and formally broke up in 1911 due to a business dispute with Darrow and a messy,
scandalous marriage. Despite the bitter personal falling out, he remained an admirer of Darrow.
Masters
published two little noted volumes
of poetry under pen names in 1898 and 1910.
During
his hiatus from the active practice of law as his
partnership with Darrow disintegrated he began work on writing and polishing poems inspired by his home town. In 1914 he began to publish these in Reedy’s
Mirror out of St. Louis under
another nom de plume, Webster Ford.
A
year later the poems were collected and issued as The Spoon River Anthology with the assistance and encouragement of Harriet Monroe of Poetry Magazine to
instant critical and popular acclaim.
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| The poet/lawyer in 1910 on the cusp of fame. |
During
his hiatus from the active practice of law as his
partnership with Darrow disintegrated he began work on writing and polishing poems inspired by his home town. In 1914 he began to publish these in Reedy’s
Mirror out of St. Louis under
another nom de plume, Webster Ford.
A
year later the poems were collected and issued as The Spoon River Anthology with the assistance and encouragement of Harriet Monroe of Poetry Magazine to
instant critical and popular acclaim.
Suddenly
the obscure lawyer was famous.
He gradually wound down the
practice of law to concentrate on a literary
career. Although he was embittered in old age that none of his subsequent work got the attention of that book, he produced prolifically and with great skill. In all there were 19 more volumes of verse including a sequel The
New Spoon River, 12 plays, 6
novels, and 7 biographies. Among the
subjects of his biographies were fellow Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay, Mark Twain, and
Walt Whitman to each of whom he owed a debt of gratitude.
His
1931 bio Lincoln the Man was a highly
controversial self-proclaimed de-mythologizing
of the Prairie President. In part it was a direct refutation of
fellow Illinois poet Carl Sandburg’s
lyrical and lionizing biographies. His
jealousy of Sandburg was well known, but he seems to have been most influenced
a loyalty to the Democratic Party of the 19th
Century which was already vanishing
outside the Deep South. He pictured Lincoln as a Whig tool of the banks and railroads from
the beginning in service to concentrated
wealth against the common man. He was pictured as tyrant who rushed the
country into an unwanted war to
the applause of Eastern elites. The book was a popular success in the South,
but it virtually destroyed his reputation with the liberal literary establishment, many previously admiring critics turning against his whole body of work.
He
had quit the practice of law
entirely by 1920 and moved to New York to
concentrate on writing. Masters finally divorced his first wife in 1923 years
after abandoning the family. In
1926 he married Ellen Coyne with
whom he had another son, Hardin.
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| Masters in Egypt in 1921. |
Although
Masters won plaudits and honors
including the Mark Twain Silver Medal
in 1936, the Poetry Society of America
medal in 1941, the Academy of American
Poets Fellowship in 1942, and the Shelly
Memorial Award in 1944 he never matched
the fame and glory of his contemporary Carl
Sandberg and often felt snubbed the Eastern
and academic poetry elite. He was not
experimental enough to be ranked
with the Imagists and modernists.
He
died March 5, 1950, in a convalescent
home near Philadelphia and was
buried back home in Petersburg in the cemetery
that inspired his greatest book.
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| Masters' grave in the cemetery at Lewistown that inspired him. A few feet away a stone inscribed with his poem now marks Ann Rutledge's grave. |
Here
are samples of Masters’ work. First from The Spoon River Anthology:
Jim Brown
While I was
handling Dom Pedro
I got at the
thing that divides the race between men who are
For singing “Turkey
in the straw” or “There is a fountain filled with blood”—
(Like Rile
Potter used to sing it over at Concord);
For cards, or
for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land;
For skipping the
light fantastic, or passing the plate;
For Pinafore, or
a Sunday school cantata;
For men, or for
money;
For the people
or against them.
This was it:
Rev. Peet and
the Social Purity Club,
Headed by Ben
Pantier’s wife,
Went to the
Village trustees,
And asked them
to make me take Dom Pedro
From the barn of
Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,
To a barn
outside of the corporation,
On the ground
that it corrupted public morals.
Well, Ben
Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day—
They thought it
a slam on colts.
—Edgar
Lee Masters
Masters
was not so down on Lincoln in those days as reflected in one of the most famous
pieces from the collection.
Ann Rutledge
Out of me
unworthy and unknown
The vibrations
of deathless music;
“With malice toward
none, with charity for all.”
Out of me the
forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the
beneficient face of a nation
Shining with
justice and truth.
I am Anne
Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life
of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him,
not through union,
But through
separation.
Bloom forever, O
Republic,
From the dust of
my bosom!
—Edgar
Lee Masters
And
finally from a later collection a glimpse of the restless soul, the Free
Thinker taunted by a spiritual yearning he barely understood.
Inexorable Deities
Deities!
Inexorable
revealers,
Give me strength
to endure
The gifts of the
Muses,
Daughters of
Memory.
When the sky is
blue as Minerva's eyes
Let me stand
unshaken;
When the sea
sings to the rising sun
Let me be
unafraid;
When the meadow
lark falls like a meteor
Through the
light of afternoon,
An unloosened
fountain of rapture,
Keep my heart
from spilling
Its vital power;
When at the dawn
The dim souls of
crocuses hear the calls
Of waking birds,
Give me to live
but master the loveliness.
Keep my eyes
unharmed from splendors
Unveiled by you,
And my ears at
peace
Filled no less
with the music
Of Passion and
Pain, growth and change.
But O ye sacred
and terrible powers,
Reckless of my
mortality,
Strengthen me to
behold a face,
To know the
spirit of a beloved one
Yet to endure,
yet to dare!
—Edgar
Lee Masters
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