Edgar Lee Masters

Today I discovered a new favorite poet. His name is Edgar Lee Masters, and I'd never heard of him before I looked at the syllabus for my American Literature class and realized I had to read his poems for class. I wasn't all that excited at first. No-name poet + lack of sleep = an awful reading assignment. But then I actually read him. And boy am I glad I did!

I guess I should give you a little background about my American Lit class. I didn't want to take it. Plain and simple. Because I hate American literature. For some reason, Nathanial Hawthorne and Ernest Hemingway don't seem like a bundle of laughs to me. Unfortunately, basic American Lit is a required class for every English major at BYU. So I very reluctantly signed up and planned on being annoyed the whole semester. And guess what happened? It's turned out to be my favorite class! Funny huh? Part of that is because of the professor (The professor really makes or breaks English classes. My professor brought us donuts one day because he needed to "repent" for missing class the time before. And he likes to make fun of the authors as much as he teaches us about them. It's a pretty sweet deal). And part of that is because I'm actually discovering that I like American literature. Well, only some of it. But that's more then when I started the class! Though in all fairness, we haven't gotten to the Postmoderns yet, which is where the literature goes wacko. So we'll see if I feel the same way at the end of the semester.

Now back to today's class. We were assigned to read a few of Masters' poems, and since I'd never heard of him, I braced myself for the worst. Really I would have been okay with anything as long as he wasn't like Emily Dickinson. And I was very pleasantly surprised. His poems were simple stories, rather than being an incomprehensible jumble of lines that has some psychological hidden meaning that no one ever understands. I love stories. One point in his favor. And what's more, they were interesting stories that I could relate to! Well, sortof. They were all told from the perspective of a dead person, so I guess I can't completely relate. But still, relatively relatable means point number two. On top of that, I enjoyed the assigned reading so much that I even looked up some of his poems that we weren't assigned to read. FOR FUN. Who does that? I guess you could classify that as my nerdy moment of the day. But what can I say, I really liked his poetry, which I'm grateful for because it made my homework much more enjoyable. And I'm grateful that I'm actually having fun in this American Lit class. I guess what they say is true: don't judge a book by it's cover. Or don't judge a class by its...course description?

Here is a sampling of Edgar Lee Masters' poems for your reading pleasure:

Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed--
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you--
It takes life to love Life.