Spoooooooooon River
Is Spoon River Anthology known only as an American classic, or perchance do Douglas Adams’ friends get to read it in middle school also? <http://www.bartleby.com/84/>
>From
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950).??Spoon River Anthology.??1916.
180.?Archibald Higbie
I LOATHED you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you, ?
I was ashamed of you. I despised you ?
As the place of my nativity. ?
And there in Rome, among the artists, ?
Speaking Italian, speaking French, ?????????5
I seemed to myself at times to be free ?
Of every trace of my origin. ?
I seemed to be reaching the heights of art ?
And to breathe the air that the masters breathed, ?
And to see the world with their eyes. ??10
But still they’d pass my work and say: ?
“What are you driving at, my friend? ?
Sometimes the face looks like Apollo’s, ?
At others it has a trace of Lincoln’s.” ?
There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River, ??15
And I burned with shame and held my peace. ?
And what could I do, all covered over ?
And weighted down with western soil, ?
Except aspire, and pray for another ?
Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River ??20
Rooted out of my soul? ?
