Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO EDGAR LEE MASTERS, by RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO EDGAR LEE MASTERS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ever since you revealed to me
Last Line: So spoon river to the new world!
Subject(s): Masters, Edgar Lee (1869-1950)


Ever since you revealed to me
Spoon River,
I have understood what Keats
Meant us to feel
In his sonnet on Chapman's Homer;
But your river is broader than the Pacific,
And the glass you have swung down to our eyes
Has made visible most of Heaven,
And more of Hell,
And all of Charity.

The critics are still squinting,
And humming and hawing.
"Is this poetry, or is it prose?"
Life must be branded . . . for the market!
Art must be labelled like a mummy!
And what of Truth?
Spoon River
Has flooded their pigeonholes
And blurred their formulas.
They will revenge themselves
By making you a fade.
Critics, remember Chanticler!
He did not crow -- in the sun;
He cannot crow it out.

The rhymers are still mumbling,
And invoking Euterpe.
"This is not poetry, nor is it prose."
Art must be shapely, gemmed . . . a reliquary!
Life must be tuneful, like a caged canary!
And what of Truth?
Spoon River
Has risen and spreads on,
Threatening their mincing gait.
They console themselves
With: "Any one can do this."
Rhymers, remember Walter Simmons!
I, one of you, agree with him:
"I didn't have the brains."

I glory in the lyric masters of our Past.
But you have swept through my heart
On a river whose rhythm is Life:
Its waves have marched through my soul
To a music whose Art is Beauty:
You have buffeted and choked me,
And left me bruised . . . but at peace!
For both blow and balm
Issued from the hands of Truth:
She is the genius of your power.
I glory in the lyric masters of our Past;
But you have made for me a glory of our Present.
The scholar in me has always leaned
To the quiet Gray;
The lover of the open, of its message
To the simple Wordsworth;
The idealist, the dreamer,
To Shelley:
But I would sooner have written
The admission of Fiddler Jones
Than the "Elegy,"
Or the vision of Faith Matheny
Than the "Intimations."
Shelley would have crowned you
With his crown.

As the Nile to Egypt,
So Spoon River to the New World!





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