Linda's Literary Home

Author: Linda Sue Grimes

  • Life Sketch of Edgar Lee Masters and Spoon River Commentaries

    Edgar Lee Masters’ American classic, Spoon River Anthology, brought the poet into the literary world, and no other work from his extensive writings has garnered more attention, including his sequel to the original, The New Spoon River.
    Image: Edgar Lee Masters – Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

    Life Sketch of Edgar Lee Masters

    Edgar Lee Masters’ American classic, Spoon River Anthology, brought the poet into the literary world, and no other work from his extensive writings has garnered more attention, including his sequel to the original, The New Spoon River.

    Early Life and Education

    Edgar Lee Masters was born on August 23, 1868, to Hardin Wallace Masters and Emma Dexter Masters in Garnett, Kansas, where Hardin Masters had established a law firm [1].  After the failure of his law firm, Masters moved his family to his parents’ farm near Petersburg, IL.  In 1880, the Masters family relocated to Lewistown, Illinois, where Edgar attended high school.

    After high school, Edgar attended the Knox Academy preparatory program offered by Knox College, but he had to drop out because his family was unable to financially support his education.  Despite his lack of a college education, Edgar studied law in his father’s law office and successfully passed the bar in 1891.

    Law Career

    After being admitted to the bar in 1891, Edgar worked in his father’s law firm and then in 1893 joined the firm of Kickham Scanlan.  He later entered a partnership in the law office of Clarence Darrow, whose fame spread far and wide because of the Scopes Trial—The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes—also known jeeringly as the “Monkey Trial.” At the Darrow firm, Edgar’s worked mainly on cases involving the poor.  

    After his three-year stint in the Darrow firm, Edgar left and formed his own firm.  His years with Darrow has been turbulent owing to arguments with Darrow, as well as Edgar’s own misbehavior of engaging in adulterous affairs, damaging the firm’s reputation.

    Marriage

    In 1898, Edgar married Helen Jenkins, and his marriage brought him nothing but heartache.  In his memoir, Across Spoon River, his wife features prominently in his narrative, but he never reveals her name; he calls Helen the “Golden Aura,” and he is doing so in a derisive tone.  Clearly he hated the woman and all she stood for.

    Edgar and the “Golden Aura” produced three children but finally divorced in 1923.   He had abandoned his marriage by 1920 as well as the practice of law, relocating to New York to concentrate on his writing.  In 1926, he married Ellen Coyne and together they produced one child, Hardin.

    Literary Career

    Edgar Lee Masters wrote and published some 39 books in addition to his American classic, Spoon River Anthology, but nothing in his canon ever gained the wide-spread fame and acclaim that the 243 reports of people speaking from the beyond the grave brought him.  Even the sequel to Spoon River Anthology, titled The New Spoon River [2], failed to garner success equal to the original.

    Even though Spoon River Anthology was banned for a time in his hometown, it returned because of its popularity elsewhere and that fact that it contained some the best poetry even penned in America [3].

    Masters was awarded the Poetry Society of America Award, the Academy Fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Award, and he was also the recipient of a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

    Edgar Lee Masters had an unpleasant personality. His behavior often bordered on misanthropic in his displays of jealousy and hatred.  He likely diminished his literary reputation through his unseemly, disingenuous portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in his 1931 biographical piece focusing on the sixteenth president, titled Lincoln: The Man.

    Bethany Villaruz [4]  has opined that the Lincoln diatribe was aimed more at Carl Sandburg than the former president:  

    Sandburg’s Lincoln books were “so popular that it was making people think of Sandburg rather than Masters when they spoke of the New Salem-Petersburg area.” Masters regarded Sandburg’s success as an encroachment on the literary landscape that he believed his own work had helped define.

    Carl Sandburg was likely aware of Masters’ petty jealousy and wrote the following in his personal copy of Masters’ Lincoln biography:  “long sustained Copperhead hymn of hate reversing the views of a Masters I knew well 10 and 15 years before he wrote these sickly venomous pages” (my emphasis added.)  

    Agreeing with Sandburg’s estimation, a New York Times reviewer opined that the book featured views that not even a Jefferson Davis would write, but instead sounded more in line with venom spewed by a Ku Klux Klan member.

    Masters had been an admirer of Stephen Douglas and Douglas’ defeat by Lincoln was likely part of Masters’ motivation to trash Lincoln in his book for which he did little to no research.  Regarding Masters’ motivation and the subsequent reception of the Lincoln biography, Matthew D. Norman [5]  has explained, 

    Lincoln: The Man was a product of the Great Depression, written by a disillusioned champion of Stephen A. Douglas and Jeffersonian republicanism. Though Spoon River Anthology was both a critical and commercial success that established Masters’s reputation as a poet, nothing he wrote during the 1920s came close to matching his initial triumph. By early 1930, he and the country were in distress. Masters was far removed from his “spiritual home” of Menard County in the spring of 1930 when he wrote Lincoln: The Man in less than two months while residing at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City.  Lincoln scholar Harry Pratt and Carl Sandburg both believed that Lincoln: The Man revealed much more about Masters’s own personal tribulations than it did about the life of Abraham Lincoln. Pratt concluded that Masters’s financial troubles and conflicts with wives, publishers, and Clarence Darrow caused him to build up so much bile that “It just boiled out on Lincoln by chance.”

    Masters claimed he wanted to present only a true account of the man called Abraham Lincoln, but he completely misread the mood of the nation when he decided to trash Lincoln instead of reveal him.  It is likely that Masters’ reputation took a greater hit than did Lincoln’s, even though those misanthropes who seize on any discourse to denigrate Republicans have put Masters’ nastiness to use.

    Spoon River Anthology

    Spoon River is a fictional town, which is a composite of Lewistown and Petersburg, IL, where Edgar grew up and where his grandparents lived respectively.  Although the town of Spoon River was a fictional creation of Edgar’s imagination, there is an Illinois river named “Spoon River,” which is a tributary of the Illinois River in the west-central part of the state, running a 148-mile-long stretch between Peoria and Galesburg.

    In 1914, Edgar had begun to publish his poems focusing on the rantings of disgruntled dead people interred in the Spoon River Cemetery, located atop a hill overlooking the fictional town of Spoon River.  Edgar had seized on an ancient structural form to have these characters working out their dirty laundry as they speak from beyond the grave.  

    Nevertheless, he published under the pseudonym Webster Ford in Reedy’s Mirror, a literary magazine based in St. Louis.  Likely fearing controversy that would clash with his profession as an attorney, he employed the nom de plume until after he left the legal profession.

    In addition to the individual reports, or “epitaphs,” as Edgar called them, the Anthology sports three other long poems, offering summaries or other material relevant to the cemetery reporters or the atmosphere of the fictional town of Spoon River:  #1 “The Hill,”#245 “The Spooniad,” and #246 “Epilogue.”

    Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry Magazine in Chicago, encouraged and assisted with the publication of Spoon River Anthology, and the collection became an instant success.  After having been published in 1915, by 1961 the collection had gone through seventy editions.  It has been made into an American play and an Italian opera, performed at La Scala.  Spoon River Anthology has also been translated into eight languages.

    Death

    Five months before turning 82, Edgar Lee Masters died on March 5, 1950, in a nursing facility in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania.  His body was transported back to  Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois, for burial.  The following inscription appears on his grave marker:

    Good friends, let’s to the fields . . .
    After a little walk and by your pardon,
    I think I’ll sleep, there is no sweeter thing.
    Nor fate more blessed than to sleep.

    I am a dream out of a blessed sleep —
    Let’s walk, and hear the lark.

    And on a stone nearby his grave,  Masters’ epitaph, “Anne Rutledge,” which contains an ironic dig at Lincoln, the Mastersian nemesis, is carved:

    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 beneficent 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!

    Masters spent his lifetime producing a plethora of writings, including 19 books of poems, 12 plays, six novels, and seven biographies.  His biographies, in addition to the Lincoln embarrassment, include those of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Vachel Lindsay.

    Edgar Lee Masters was the sad little man, but no one can diminish the success he achieved with his Spoon River Anthology, which has risen to the status of an American classic, despite its being filled with disgruntled individuals.  He well understood the nature of those characters, being himself a disgruntled, agitated soul.

    Sources

    [1]  Herbert K. Russell. Edgar Lee Masters: A Biography. University of Illinois Press. 2001.

    [2]  Edgar Lee Masters. The New Spoon River.  Macmillan. New York. 1924. Print.

    [3]  Laura Wolff Scanlan.  “How the Once-Banned Spoon River Anthology Made a Comeback in Lewistown.”  Humanities:  The Magazine for the National Endowment for the Humanities. November/December 2015.

    [4]  Bethany Villaruz.  “The Sangamon, Soured: Lincoln, The Man & Its Twisted Tropes.”  Friends of the Lincoln Collection.  Accessed June 15, 2026..

    [5]  Matthew D. Norman.  “An Illinois Iconoclast: Edgar Lee Masters and the Anti-Lincoln Tradition.”  Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.  Winter 2003.

    Image: Edgar Lee Masters – Commemorative Stamp

    Poem Commentaries on Spoon River Anthology

    1. The Hill
    2. Hod Putt
    3. Ollie McGee
    4. Fletcher McGee
    5. Robert Fulton Tanner
    6. Cassius Hueffer
    7. Serepta Mason
    8. Amanda Barker
    9. Constance Hately
    10. Chase Henry
    11. Harry Carey Goodhue
    12. Judge Somers
    13. Kinsey Keene 
    14. Benjamin Pantier
    15. Mrs. Benjamin Pantier
    16. Reuben Pantier
    17. Emily Sparks
    18. Trainor, the Druggist
    19. Daisy Fraser
    20. Benjamin Fraser
    21. Minerva Jones
    22. “Indignation” Jones
    23. Doctor Meyers
    24. Mrs. Meyers
    25. “Butch” Weldy
    26. Knowlt Hoheimer
    27. Lydia Puckett
    28. Frank Drummer
    29. Hare Drummer
    30. Conrad Siever
    31. Doc Hill
    32. Andy the Night-Watch
    33. Sarah Brown
    34. Percy Bysshe Shelley
    35. Flossie Cabanis
    36. Julia Miller
    37. Johnnie Sayre
    38. Charlie French
    39. Zenas Witt
    40. Theodore the Poet
    41. The Town Marshal
    42. Jack McGuire
    43. Dorcas Gustine
    44. Nicholas Bindle
    45. Jacob Goodpasture
    46. Harold Arnett
    47. Margaret Fuller Slack
    48. George Trimble
    49. Dr. Siegfried Iseman
    50. “Ace” Shaw
    51. Lois Spears
    52. Justice Arnett
    53. Willard Fluke
    54. Aner Clute
    55. Lucius Atherton
    56. Homer Clapp
    57. Deacon Taylor
    58. Sam Hookey
    59. Cooney Potter
    60. Fiddler Jones
    61. Nellie Clark
    62. Louise Smith
    63. Herbert Marshall
    64. George Gray
    65. Hon. Henry Bennett
    66. Griffy the Cooper
    67. Sersmith the Dentist
    68. A. D. Blood
    69. Robert Southey Burke
    70. Dora Williams

  • Loose Musing on the Eve

    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Loose Musing on the Eve

    Posing on the brink of an idea
    Losing sunlight in the afternoon
    Starting to blink in the glow of fire
    Righting the water of despair
    Sweltering sun and deep notions

    The mind can filter
    The edges of questions
    Where the heart tenders
    Make smiles a target
    No stealing blooms

    They held their tents
    But let the trees think
    Left open the stars
    Cracked open the moon
    Waited by the ink waters

    Blaming the grid of eyeless sorrow
    Shaming the beauty lost on stress
    Naming each blossom after its fist
    Cramming mud into the valley
    Deluding a masterful stroke

    Do you stand with the anchor?
    Is your soil too heavy to bear?
    Do you hope to vanish before dawn?
    Do you blame fingers for stopping?
    Are you spilling courage over rocks?

    Maybe the shovel will move to the center
    Where indifferent buds fling frost to the wind
    Maybe the carriage is already full of bodies
    Perhaps a stiff branch will stop the breeze
    Perhaps craving hope will erase blind fury

    Will an insult count in the bosom of dankness
    Where the lilies grow bleak from taint
    Where the roses tend worms and minutes?
    Will the dream come slow and forceful
    Or will the nightmare block all sight?

    Using the breath to rise from the ground
    Amusing the tickle in the brain of sound.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” is musing on the nature of silence and secrets, transforming metaphorically a volcano into a figure of thoughtful restraint. This idea creates a paradox that challenges the nature and purpose of human speech.

    Introduction and Text of “The reticent volcano keeps”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” is exploring the tense relationship between divine knowledge and human awareness by delving into nature’s ability to keep secrets as opposed to humanity’s driving need to speak out and to be heard by others.

    The poem, thus, is ultimately a study in contrasts. The speaker concocts a parallel universe, in which the forces of nature adhere to perfect discretion as human beings often go off the rails by remaining loquacious and even indiscreet, as they engage loudly in mere gossip.

    The metaphorical volcano becomes the speaker’s prime example of nature’s superior restraint. Unlike explosive human beings, this volcanic force has mastered the art of keeping secrets and thus holds its ever awake strategy in blissful silence.

    The reticent volcano keeps

    The reticent volcano keeps
    His never slumbering plan —
    Confided are his projects pink
    To no precarious man.

    If nature will not tell the tale
    Jehovah told to her
    Can human nature not survive
    Without a listener?

    Admonished by her buckled lips
    Let every babbler be
    The only secret people keep
    Is Immortality.

    Commentary on “The reticent volcano keeps”

    Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” creates a speaker who comments on the nature of silence and secrets. The speaker employs a metaphor of a volcano to compare the ideas of restraint to the chatty nature of humanity, whose only secret “Is Immortality.”

    First Stanza: The Volcano’s Secret

    The reticent volcano keeps
    His never slumbering plan —
    Confided are his projects pink
    To no precarious man.

    The speaker begins by metaphorically creating the image of a  volcano that keeps secrets.  There is almost a hint of personification of that geologic force, as it is described as “reticent” but capable of deliberately and consciously making the choice to keep its secrets.

    By calling the volcano “reticent,” the speaker gives it a personality with intention. Thus the volcano becomes human-like with the ability to make choices.  And its choice is to stay mum about its purpose for its activities.

    The image of the “never slumbering plan” heralds forth a disturbing tension. On its surface, the volcano seems to remain dormant, yet beneath that quiet surface rumbles a permanent, definite intention. 

    According to this fantasized scenario, the volcano is not experiencing a passive rest but instead is engaging in the restraint of wide-awake watching.  Thus the speaker is implying that actual power comes with restraint, not from revelation. 

    Stated another way:  the volcano’s power lies in what it does not say, or what it refuses to reveal about its hidden activities.  The volcano does not merely have a plan, but it also protects and preserves that plan from outside observation that would cause interference with its intentions.

    The speaker is therefore presenting the volcano as a model of perfect prudence, a power that is capable of destroying the landscape yet chooses to keep its secrets.  The speaker is implying that such choices are the result of self-control.  And that kind of self-control is to be admired.

    The speaker unveils minor details, labeling them “projects pink,” which suggest images of dawn, flowering blossoms, or a gently glowing fire.  Still, the volcano reveals these intimate secrets to no one, definitely not to unreliable human beings.

    The color “pink” brings an unexpected gentleness into the scenario of volcanic force.   The speaker seems to be suggesting that even the most dramatic natural forces contain delicate qualities hidden from view.

    The speaker portrays human beings as “precarious” because they remain basically unreliable and too fickle to be trusted with nature’s serious purposes. Human beings are deemed unworthy to be afforded information about nature’s activities.  

    So, the phrase “confided are” suggests that the volcano’s secrets exist in a state of trust. But such trust is not extended to humans, again because human beings have not proven themselves to be trustworthy.  

    The speaker has thus created a hierarchy of trustworthiness. The volcano is placed at the top of the spectrum and humanity at the bottom. The natural world, as opposed to the human world thus serves as the reliable retainer of divine secrets.

    Second Stanza: Divine Silence

    If nature will not tell the tale
    Jehovah told to her
    Can human nature not survive
    Without a listener?

    The speaker then broadens her view beyond the volcanic keeper of secrets to encompass all of nature in this conspiracy of silence. The speaker suggests that God Himself has shared secrets with the natural world.

    The phrase “the tale / Jehovah told to her” implies the intimate conversational relationship between Creator and creation. The speaker presents this scenario as a whispered confidence that remains eternally unbroken.

    By employing the name “Jehovah,” the speaker invokes one of the most sacred names for God. This raises the conversation beyond casual exchange to profound holiness and therefore deserving of absolute attention.

    In other words, the speaker is implying that nature serves as God’s confidante. Unlike the human being,  who is supposed to be God’s most valuable and honored creation but has fallen short, the natural world has proven itself worthy of divine trust and continues to honor that sacred responsibility.

    The term “tale” points to a narrative or story, most likely mythology. The speaker thus implies that God has shared His most profound stories of creation with nature, stories that remain hidden.

    The speaker presents this divine sharing as a test of loyalty. Nature has passed the test by maintaining perfect silence, while humanity has failed time and again because of its compulsive need to speak.  

    At this point, the speaker poses the poem’s poignant question: If nature can keep divine secrets, why cannot human beings behave honorably, without constantly needing to speak and be heard?

    The term “survive” suggests the strong need for listeners; it is not merely a preference but an existential need. The speaker thus implies that humans require witnesses to their thoughts to maintain their very existence.  

    Ultimately, the speaker is creating a sharp distinction between “nature” and “human nature.”  Nature is capable of self-sufficient silence, while human nature has acquired the bad habit of constant verbal interaction just to function.

    The question becomes philosophical as well as practical. The speaker wonders whether humanity’s need for an audience is weakness or simply part of its essential character as social beings.  

    The speaker implies that humanity’s inability to keep secrets stems from its fundamental need for connection.  Human beings speak because they must be heard to feel that they are living.

    The question rises to a note of near-pathetic bewilderment. The speaker remains genuinely baffled by humanity’s inability to match nature’s perfect discretion and self-contained silence.

    Third Stanza: The Moral Lesson

    Admonished by her buckled lips
    Let every babbler be
    The only secret people keep
    Is Immortality.

    The speaker concludes with nature as an instructor of ethical and moral behavior.   The image of nature’s “buckled lips,” clasped tightly, serves to castigate human compulsive loquaciousness.

    The image of “buckled lips” is also mechanical as well as organic. The speaker suggests that while nature’s silence is instinctive, it is also deliberate, making it a disciplined choice.  

    The speaker chastises “every babbler,” shaming human beings for their inability to hold their tongues. Apparently, they cannot mirror the volcano’s patient discretion or even understand nature’s faithful, enduring silence.

    The term “babbler” is especially damning, reducing human communication to meaningless chatter.  Such constant talk lacks the dignity of nature’s meaningfully purposeful silence.

    The speaker delivers the poem’s most devastating irony. The one secret that humans do manage to keep is “Immortality”—their silence about death and what lies beyond.  This final revelation transforms the entire poem’s earlier criticisms. 

    In this final irony, the speaker both condemns and redeems humanity.  Humans are babblers about everything except what matters most—their own eternal destiny and ultimate meaning.

    But what does the speaker imply by claiming that humanity keeps secrets about Immortality?  Merely the fact that most of humanity speaks and behaves without giving Immortality or what lies beyond the grave much thought.

    The topic of “Immortality” is left up to poets, philosophers, and theologians.  And although these groups have proffered tomes on the issue, their theories go largely unnoticed on the street.  

    The speaker would have talk about life beyond this life become more open to everyone.  She seems to feel that the one secret that humanity continues to keep is the only one that truly matters.  

    She thus would have humanity keep some of its more chatty issues to itself, reorder its thinking, and begin producing volcanic force in conversations that would truly move the culture along to a more open sharing of eternal truths.  But first, of course, she must try to influence humanity to take an interest in profundity instead of petty, chatty gossip.

  • Louder than the Moon

    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Louder than the Moon

    The glow of moon sets me to musing
    On moving in the distance of surprise.

    Fear cannot conquer itself, you might think,
    But how to know courage might also be
    A subject to muse on and to fuse then
    Your sorrow to the ilk of betrayal
    Not searching for the end but the stop.

    The glow of moon sets me again to musing
    On moving surprise into the distance far.

    Doing all I can to state what I mean
    In the space around divided worries
    I will not go beyond words to wield
    The sword of hatred that may blind
    Too many eyeballs blinkered by power.

    The glow of moon musing sets me to wink
    At surprising moves that go the distance.

    After I learn to see and feel and know
    My own will as it exerts itself strong
    I will never sit in the same seat
    Where wrong has overcome right—
    Where night has pretended day.

    The glowing moon is musing on me, inspiring
    Distances with humble, intimate surprises.

    I will question, I will inquire, I will query—
    As I meditate on the glowing light,
    Where I go to transcend, where I move
    And meet this flesh-housed treasure
    That glows louder and brighter than the moon.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I know”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I know”

    In “The Only News I know,” Emily Dickinson creates a speaker who offers a glimpse at the poet’s satisfying daily existence.  She demonstrates how she keeps her consciousness focused only on things of the Divine Realm, thus, avoiding those of the mundane, vulgar, physical existence.

    Introduction with Text of  “The Only News I know”

    The reality of “the news” automatically holds all manner of things that have gone wrong during ordinary life.  Accidents, illness, murders, robberies, war, deceit, political intrigue all figure in the news reports that come to one daily.  

    While these topics tend to agitate, confuse, and sadden most folks who listen to “the news,” seldom does anyone offer an antidote to lessen the pain, frustration, confusion brought about by the bad news reports that accost the citizenry daily.

    Although Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Only News I know,” is obviously an exaggeration, it, nevertheless, dramatizes the most important topics with which the poet likes to engage: immortality, eternity, and God.   She likes to engage and occupy her thinking and musing with ethereal places and events.  And this creative thinking easily replaces the mundane and vulgar events that daily hem one round.

    The physical world is such a cold and often desolate place for sensitive individuals and once those individuals acquire some inkling of a different world, a spiritual level of existence, or an astral world, they prefer it. 

    They inquire, read, and study about the possibility of a place where the soul lives on after it leaves the gross physical encasement.  Such a place offers the individual the opportunity to live more abundantly and completely without the trammels and trappings of earthly existence. 

    The thought of a “heaven” or an astral existence gives one hope that all the unseemly events reported in “the news” are only temporary and feature only a passing blight that the pure soul must put up with but only for a while.  While the physical reality is only temporary, the soul’s reality is permanent.

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I Know” consists of four tercets, or three-line stanzas that examine the glorious possibility of living in a world of everlasting beauty, with an always blissful feeling, and ever-new joy. 

    Each tercet adheres to its own rime scheme: ABC, ABA, AAB, ABC. Each line displays six syllables, except for the final line in the final tercet, which yields only four syllables.  The four-syllable line gives the poem an abruptness that further enhances the meaning of the content: the speaker makes her claims in crispness and ends with a snap.

    The Only News I know

    The Only News I know
    Is Bulletins all Day
    From Immortality.

    The Only Shows I see  –
    Tomorrow and Today –
    Perchance Eternity –

    The Only One I meet
    Is God – The Only Street –
    Existence – This traversed

    If Other News there be –
    Or Admirabler Show –
    I’ll tell it You –

    Commentary on “The Only News I know”

    In this poem, Emily Dickinson has created a speaker who reports brief glimpses of what it is like to create a satisfying daily existence.   Instead of “bulletins” from news reports on daily misery, her bulletins come from a mystical place where only joy permeates the soul. 

    First Tercet:  Focus on the Spiritual  

    The Only News I know
    Is Bulletins all Day
    From Immortality.

    In the first stanza, the speaker asserts that the only information she recognizes is that which comes from “Immortality.” She claims that she receives brief news headlines during the whole day, implying that these brief reports come to her even as she is working. 

    This speaker is more interested in mystical, that is, spiritual awareness than she is in mundane earthly things.  Thus she can easily space out the mundane and fill it with ethereal blessings.

    Second Tercet:  A Permanent Frame of Mind  

    The Only Shows I see –
    Tomorrow and Today –
    Perchance Eternity –

    The speaker then avers that the only programs or performances she watches are those that pertain similarly to things and events that are everlastingly entertaining.   She then implies that the time frame in which she experiences these blessings is permanent. She leaves open some doubt by inserting the term “[p]erchance” likely only for the sake of skeptical listeners.

    It becomes clear that this speaker entertains no doubt about her claims regarding the landscape of the soul—those topics that obtain for “Immortality” and “Eternity.”   She is not so naïve as to believe that in the physical world these qualities hold fast.  

    If that were so, she would have no need to report on such beyond-earth loci.  She could go about simply revealing all the blessings she detects from earthly pleasures.   But because earthly paradise remains out of possibility, she has to report about mystical places with figurative language, including colorful images and metaphors.

    Third Tercet:   God Alone

    The Only One I meet
    Is God – The Only Street –
    Existence –This traversed

    The speaker then reveals her startling claim, as Dickinson speakers are often wont to do: “The Only One I meet / Is God.”   And instead of further drama or explication on meeting God, she rushes on mid-line to claim that the only path she travels is that of “Existence.” This “street” is the one that she “traverse[s]” freely. 

    Her interest focuses only on being.  She leaves the idea of becoming to others.  While she experiences this great eternal present of being, she remains in a state of blissful confidence. 

    Fourth Tercet:    No Other News

    If Other News there be –
    Or Admirabler Show –
    I’ll tell it You –

    Then the speaker declares that if, in fact, she ever acquires any other significant information, she will let her listeners know about it. But her matter-of-fact declamations have made it quite clear that she does not expect such “Other News” to assail her consciousness. 

    She is aware that she is creating her own garden of verse into which she has the ability to place anything she wishes.  In her garden of creation, she can remain in her mystical state of awareness, meeting only angels and other eternal beings. 

    Every flower, every bird, every blade of grass has become endowed with the grace of the Heavenly Father, the Ultimate Reality, the Divine Being that is God.  The speaker’s dedication to such bliss becomes so full that she is urged to share her state with her audience, and she gladly complies with that urge. 

  • A Sense of Sorrow

    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    A Sense of Sorrow

    The darkness and vastness of the center
    Bends over the vastness of each beginning—
    Over the rivers of memory, you spread
    Rivers of sick sorrow to each end.

    The end of each vein springs blood
    And blood seeps into the water of light.
    Water finds its own reference point
    And each point fingers mud on granite.

    The mud that covers your soul
    Will shuck itself in the soul of sorrow.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring” is striving to portray a certain kind of light that “exists [only] in Spring” or very near spring.

    Introduction with Text of “A Light exists in Spring”

    Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring” features five quatrains with a somewhat erratic rime scheme.  Each quatrain follows a fairly regular pattern of ABCB with the second quatrain offering the slant rime, “fields / feels,” and the third quatrain offering no rime at all. 

    The final quatrain again features an irregular pair of rimes, “Content / Sacrament.”  The theme of the poem focuses on a special feeling that becomes engendered in the observer as she experiences a certain kind of light.


    A Light exists in Spring

    A Light exists in Spring
    Not present on the Year
    At any other period –
    When March is scarcely here

    A Color stands abroad
    On Solitary Fields
    That Science cannot overtake
    But Human Nature feels.

    It waits upon the Lawn,
    It shows the furthest Tree
    Upon the furthest Slope you know
    It almost speaks to you.

    Then as Horizons step
    Or Noons report away
    Without the Formula of sound
    It passes and we stay –

    A quality of loss
    Affecting our Content
    As Trade had suddenly encroached
    Upon a Sacrament.

    Commentary on “A Light exists in Spring”

    Emily Dickinson has created a speaker in “A Light exists in Spring” who is musing upon and then striving to portray a certain kind of light that becomes visible only during the season of spring or, at least, very near that season of rebirth.

    First Quatrain:  A Particular Light

    A Light exists in Spring
    Not present on the Year
    At any other period —
    When March is scarcely here

    The speaker asserts that this light may be experienced “in Spring,” and this particular light cannot be seen at any other time of the year.  However, the speaker then reports that this light does appear just after the month of March has arrived.

    This claim, therefore, suggests that the light might also appear just before the actual season of spring has arrived.  The season of spring does not begin until the third week of March, not in early March, as the speaker seems to be suggesting.

    Second Quatrain:   Not Identified by Science

    A Color stands abroad
    On Solitary Fields
    That Science cannot overtake
    But Human Nature feels.

    The speaker now claims that it is possible to observe a certain shade of color that has descended upon the “fields.” This extraordinary “color” apparently has not been identified in nature by science.  However, human beings, according to this speaker, are capable of sensing this color without a name for or scientific description of it.

    The speaker, therefore, hints that the color of this special light does not exist at all in nature, and it is perhaps only visible to the human soul—not the mind or even the heart—as  such lights as rainbows or the aura borealis are visible to the human eye.

    Third Quatrain:  Unearthly, Perhaps Mystical

    It waits upon the Lawn,
    It shows the furthest Tree
    Upon the furthest Slope you know
    It almost speaks to you.

    This unearthly—perhaps even mystical—light with its special color may be experienced as it stands “upon the Lawn.” However, the light may also appear in trees that grow very far away and may also be gleaned from faraway, quite distant from the where the speaker views it.  The speaker now reports that this strange mystical light may seem to converse with anyone, but its language would be one only known to the soul.

    The speaker then strives to arouse in her listeners and readers an understanding that would be quite likely impossible to shape into words.  The speaker has been carried to an indescribable place within her own soul.

    This light that is capable of “wait[ing] upon the Lawn” but does not instantly pass across the lawn strongly suggests that it is capable of  halting time for a short period—possibly to allow the observer to contemplate the nature of its existence.

    Fourth Quatrain:  As the Light Passes

    Then as Horizons step
    Or Noons report away
    Without the Formula of sound
    It passes and we stay —

    That time period which comes through experiencing that special light cannot wait long and thus “it passes.”  Of course, the observer remains, that is, this speaker remains where she is while the light passes on.

    The special light thus seems to resemble sunlight after it has passed overhead around the noon hour.  Naturally, its final departure is without fanfare, although the speaker seems to have expected a sound, or some other sign to help her understand the strange feeling that this light has engendered in her.

    Fifth Quatrain:   An Inappropriate Intrusion

    A quality of loss
    Affecting our Content
    As Trade had suddenly encroached
    Upon a Sacrament.

    The speaker then asserts that she feels a kind of deep loss.  It is as if something drastically inappropriate has happened.   The speaker expresses that painful inappropriateness as the same as finding of “Trade” intruding “Upon a Sacrament.”  She feels as wronged as Jesus felt upon encountering the money changers in the temple.  

    Spiritual Clarity

    In Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring,” the speaker has made a valiant effort to describe the ineffable.  Such a task is impossible, but it is possible to portray the feelings that this ineffable entity has engendered in the heart and mind of the individual observer of that indescribable entity. 

    Thus the speaker has remained vague about what this light looks like, but she has made it quite clear how it has made her feel, and that is her reason for creating this particular little drama.

    The speaker’s experience viewing this special light has moved her very deeply. Although she cannot portray the light’s physical nature, she can suggest the nature of the way the light has influenced her mentally and spiritually.

  • Options

    Image: Created by ChatGPT & Grok inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT & Grok inspired by the poem

    Options

    Faces in the wind
    Seeming miles from shore
    A blank page awaits
    Walking fast past the window
    The pane seems real
    As any pain always will
    Slowing down is an option
    But you’d rather get answers
    Than continue to question

    Fleeing is an option
    But a bridge looms large
    As rivers of memories emerge
    Standing is another option
    But the brink seems dangerous
    And a canyon of disdain
    May dismay the heart again

    Leaving the woods
    Is an option
    Faster than crawling over logs
    Seizing the moment seems real
    Until the sunlight pierces the grass
    Then all bets are off and moving goes
    By trees that stand even more still than water
    Turning to ice in the snowy field
    Praying is an option
    Placing your life before the judge
    Allowing your soul to be guarded
    And guided as the weather booms
    And the horizon seems old and worn–
    I will make my bed of leaves, fold my hands
    Calm my heart and mind and the winter
    Storm will not touch my skin

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The Brain – is wider than the Sky”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Brain – is wider than the Sky”

    Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Brain – is wider than the Sky,” compares and contrasts the human brain/mind with the sky, the sea, and God.

    Introduction and Text of “The Brain – is wider than the Sky”

    The idea that a human being is made in the image of God was not first conceived by a poet; that claim is found in the ancient text of the Holy Bible, and both Eastern and Western religious philosophical texts expound principles that the image of the Divine Creator exists in the children that He has created.  

    Emily Dickinson possessed a great depth of knowledge of the King James Version of the Bible. Undoubtedly, as she composed this poem, she quite obviously kept in mind the following biblical claim from Genesis 1:26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” 

    Dickinson’s poem, “The Brain – is wider than the Sky,” offers a unique expression of understanding regarding the unity of the Godhead and humankind.  Emily Dickinson’s mystical ability allowed her to understand many ideas and concepts about the ineffable levels of being.

    She was, therefore, able to interpret and expound on those ideas and concepts.  However, instead of showcasing her knowledge in treatises, she chose to create little dramas with her poems.

    The Brain – is wider than the Sky

    The Brain – is wider than the Sky –
    For – put them side by side –
    The one the other will contain
    With ease – and You – beside –

    The Brain is deeper than the sea –
    For – hold them – Blue to Blue –
    The one the other will absorb –
    As Sponges – Buckets – do –

    The Brain is just the weight of God –
    For – Heft them – Pound for Pound –
    And they will differ – if they do –
    As Syllable from Sound –

    Commentary on “The Brain – is wider than the Sky”

    Metaphorically referring to the mind as the “Brain,” Dickinson’s speaker offers the essential truth that the Supreme Creator fashioned human beings in His image.

    First Stanza:  Brain Power

    The Brain – is wider than the Sky –
    For – put them side by side –
    The one the other will contain
    With ease – and You – beside –

    The first stanza contrasts the brain/mind with the sky claiming that the brain is wider because it can think about the sky and at the same time can think about the person who is thinking about the sky, and it can perform this operation easily. 

    That the brain can hold the sky reveals that the “Brain” is, indeed, a metaphor for “mind.”  It is the mind, after all that, entertains the thought that is labeled “sky.”  And while the mind is thinking “sky,” it also has the marvelous ability to retain thoughts of “you,” the reader, listener, audience—whoever might be hearing this lyric.

    It will also be noted that the mind—”Brain”—possesses the ability to range even farther than the sky because it is “wider.”  The width of the sky is not known; it is unlimited, thus the “mind” is even beyond unlimited—it being “wider.”  

    Such a quality must give one pause as one considers the possibility of possessing an instrument that can range beyond the limits of visual acuity.  And this speaker is offering many instances that give the reader pause for thought—in order words, to exercise that mighty Brain/mind.

    Second Stanza:  More Brain Power

    The Brain is deeper than the sea –
    For – hold them – Blue to Blue –
    The one the other will absorb –
    As Sponges – Buckets – do –

    The second stanza contrasts the brain with the sea asserting that the brain can take in the sea as a sponge sucks up a bucket of water, once again referencing the vast thinking ability of the brain/mind. 

    If sponges can absorb buckets of water, they must be very large sponges and/or very many of them.  The speaker is asserting again a vastness that is unlimited, even as sponges sucking up buckets of water might be.  

    But because she does not say two buckets, four buckets, or more, being absorbed by twenty or forty sponges, she has again allowed an unlimited number of items to come to mind. As the sky is limitless, those sponges and buckets must remain limitless as well, if their metaphorical likeness to the brain/mind is to remain operative.

    Third Stanza:  The Ultimate Brain Power

    The Brain is just the weight of God –
    For – Heft them – Pound for Pound –
    And they will differ – if they do –
    As Syllable from Sound –

    The third stanza contrasts but also compares the human brain to God. This stanza inflicts an interpretive difficulty; certain readers might mistakenly believe that the speaker is making a blasphemous assertion that the brain and God are the same.  However, as elucidated in the following section, “God Is Not Limited,” such a claim is without merit.

    God—the Unlimited

    All devout believers contend that God is not limited by or to any one item of His creation. Almighty God—the Divine Belovèd and Father of All—is rightly considered to be vastly greater than all His creations taken together.  

    The human brain/mind thus is only one of God’s many creations, so to claim that “The Brain is just the weight of God” may at first without due reflection seem as if the speaker means that they are equal. 

    However, the blasphemy charge can be denied with a closer look at what the poem actually does, especially in the last three lines of the last stanza: 

    For – Heft them – Pound for Pound –
    And they will differ – if they do –
    As Syllable from Sound –

    The speaker does not claim that the brain/mind and God are the exact same; she is concluding that the brain/mind and God are similar because of their vastness which she has demonstrated in her contrasts with the sky and sea.  

    The sky and the sea are massive—virtually cosmic in their proportions to other earthy creations—yet the brain/mind can conceive of them as ideas, which means that the brain/mind can hold them–that is, it can hold the ideas of those enormous entities. 

    As the speaker makes her claim that the brain/mind and God are close in essence, she expresses the reality that they do differ–they differ one from the other as a “syllable” differs from a “sound.” That difference is a solid one because there is a definite difference between a syllable and a sound.  

    The sense of the term “if”—in “if they do”—then becomes more accurately interpreted as “since” or “because.”  She is offering the actual difference which negates the dual property of “if.”

    However, because the aim of her speculation is to celebrate the significance as well as vastness of the brain/mind’s capabilities, the speaker avers that the brain/mind and God are similar.  After all, it is the brain/mind that conceives the notion of God. 

    Still, God remains greater than the brain/mind because while the brain/mind is a “syllable,” God is “sound”; thus, the brain/mind becomes a perceivable symbolic representation of the ineffable God, as a syllable is a representation of sound.   The difference is real, and ultimately, it is immeasurably more vast than the sky and ocean.

  • The Clown

    211a Image-Created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

    The Clown

    Keeping the tone that shed light on fear
    She waits with furious fists aimed and steady
    I keep her in mind lest she get too far behind
    The rope of despair or the bilge of traitors

    The story ends where the road begins
    Playing with sonnets sitting in a tree
    I shall sharpen my eye as I bend a knee
    And become tranquil in the dusk

    She can speak of you even as she thinks
    Of the perfidy you caused to awaken
    The minds splaying their wares
    Sunny and free as daisies with rust

    Leave the brook and let darkness near
    As you ache for the morning bliss
    Scatter the frost on the turtle
    And bend your breath till it breaks

    Underneath the ferns, you will hide fraud
    Lingering and longing for unearned praise–
    Who will suspect that you sang fire into being
    With your swagger and your sway?

    As each light turns its magic upon the wind
    Purple pride will gather with the dew
    Frost and fog will play everywhere upon
    The resounding lies you repeat and repeat

    Day light will not turn you into the clown
    Romping in terror but night time will allow
    Your audience to hear the honking
    And the noise seeping from your throat