Linda's Literary Home

Author: Linda Sue Grimes

  • Edgar Lee Masters’ “Johnnie Sayre”

    Image:  Edgar Lee Masters - Portrait by Francis J. Quirk https://francisquirk.blogspot.com/2017/03/visit-to-national-portrait-gallery.html
    Image:  Edgar Lee Masters – Portrait by Francis J. Quirk https://francisquirk.blogspot.com/2017/03/visit-to-national-portrait-gallery.html

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “Johnnie Sayre”

    Edgar Lee Masters’ character Johnnie Sayre speaks to the Divine Belovèd (God), remembering the excruciating pain that resulted in his death, finding grace in his early demise.

    Introduction and Text of “Johnnie Sayre”

    In Edgar Lee Masters’ “Johnnie Sayre” from his American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker is talking to the Divine Creator, while most of the characters address their remarks to the citizens of Spoon River or one of their relatives.

    Some of the characters who speak in this remarkable sequence become admirable in the eyes of their readers/listeners, while others invite further disdain, just as they obviously did in their miserable lifetimes. 

    Johnnie Sayre is one the more admirable characters.  He accepts responsibility for his own transgressions in life, and he humbly offers his love and appreciation to the Divine Reality (God) for the soul guidance he understands he is being given.

    Johnnie Sayre

    Father, thou canst never know
    The anguish that smote my heart  
    For my disobedience, the moment I felt
    The remorseless wheel of the engine
    Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.
    As they carried me to the home of widow Morris
    I could see the school-house in the valley  
    To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.  
    I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—
    And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!
    From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness.
    Thou wert wise to chisel for me:  
    “Taken from the evil to come.”

    Commentary of “Johnnie Sayre”

    Masters’ character Johnnie Sayre speaks to the Divine Belovèd, remembering the excruciating pain that resulted in his death, finding grace in his early demise.

    First Movement:  Addressing His Creator

    Father, thou canst never know
    The anguish that smote my heart  
    For my disobedience, the moment I felt
    The remorseless wheel of the engine
    Sink into the crying flesh of my leg.

    In a prayerful mode, Johnnie Sayre addresses his Maker, exaggerating that the Creator, Who is both omnipresent and omniscient, cannot know how much Johnnie suffered.   Of course, God knows such, but by exclaiming that He cannot, Johnnie implies that the depth is well beyond human comprehension.

    Johnnie was stealing a ride on a train, when he finds himself losing his leg to “[t]he remorseless wheel of the engine” that “[sank] into the crying flesh of [his] leg.”  Johnnie’s anguish, however, is not that his leg was being crushed.

    That unhappy accident merely triggers his guilt over the act of theft.  He suddenly becomes aware that he is paying a karmic debt, and his capability to understand and accept that debt causes him great “anguish.”

    Second Movement:  Remembering His Transgressions

    As they carried me to the home of widow Morris
    I could see the school-house in the valley  
    To which I played truant to steal rides upon the trains.

    Johnnie is reminded of his transgression against one of the commandments as he is being transported to the nearby home of the widow Morris.   As the rescuers move Johnnie to the woman’s home, he could see his “school-house in the valley.”  He admits that he played hooky from school “to steal rides upon the trains.”

    Third Movement:   Desirous of God’s Forgiveness

    I prayed to live until I could ask your forgiveness—
    And then your tears, your broken words of comfort!

    Johnnie confesses that he wanted to live until he could beg God for His forgiveness.  He talks to God as he would his human father.   Johnnie expects to see God shed tears for His son’s transgression, and he awaits God’s “broken words of comfort!”  At this point, Johnnie shows a touching sweetness in his relationship with the Divine.

    Johnnie accepts his responsibility for his own behavior; he does not blame God or the Spoon River citizens as so many others in the cemetery do, for example “Minerva Jones” and “Daisy Fraser.”  

    Fourth Movement: Crediting the Divine Creator

    From the solace of that hour I have gained infinite happiness. Thou wert wise to chisel for me:  
    “Taken from the evil to come.”

    Johnnie is amply rewarded because of his attitude.  He finds “solace” and furthermore “gain[s] infinite happiness.”  He credits the Divine Creator for “chisel[ing] for me” a life that he would probably have been too weak to have chosen for himself.

    Johnnie realizes that God has rescued him from all the “evil to come”; he knows that the way he was living could have only brought more evil into his life, and through God’s grace, he has been spared that evil, and at the same time given succor.  

    The metaphorical chiseling also implies that perhaps upon Johnnie’s tombstone is chiseled the phrase, “Taken from the evil to come.”  In that case, it becomes clear that Johnnie’s exploits were well known by those close to him, which makes Johnnie’s attitude even more admirable.    

    Instead of cursing those who knew of his “evil,” he accepts their admonitions and rightly credits Divine Intervention that finally liberates him from further wrongs.  Johnnie remains one of the more admirable characters residing in the Spoon River after-life menagerie of characters.

  • Funereal

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Funereal

    Let’s pay our respects—one long, last gaze
    at this one who
    for so short a span
    embodied passion. Now here he lies,
    embalmed and cosmeticized,
    just another dead affair, with a smirk stealing
    across his lips, those lips that just days ago smiled,
    then softening, sank soul-deep in kisses.

    Look, see the eyes swollen
    and sewn tight—those same eyes
    that lit the chambers
    of our hearts.  See the stiff arms
    that reached and drew us
    heart to heart.

    They are closing the lid now.
    We must walk away.  I think
    I will pretend I did not know him.
    And even if I sometimes wonder
    what you remember about him,
    I will never ask, because I know
    his sunless eyes have not eclipsed your heart
    the way they have mine.

  • The Truth of the Bones

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    The Truth of the Bones  

    Those acid tears have eaten away
    the last ounce of flesh from that ample carcass,
    and the autumn rains have washed the skeleton 
    over the rocks of her memory where those bones 
    lie bleaching in the sun of her returning smile.

    That eyeless skull speaks the truth,
    not like his blue liars of June
    that promised to light the way to love.

    That lipless mouth speaks the truth,
    not like his flesh-rimmed hole 
    that spewed poisoned honey.

    Those fleshless arms speak the truth,
    not like that soft, warm circle
    that held her against that bloodless heart.

    She can sing in measured tones: 

    “You are bone-true
    and now
    I can
    respect you.”

  • D. H. Lawrence’s Novel “Women in Love”

    D. H. Lawrence 1280 Transcend
    Image: D. H. Lawrence – Transcend Media Service

    D. H. Lawrence’s Novel Women in Love

    D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love offers a study of the 20th-century issue of the divided nature of the human mind.  The flawed characters of Rupert and Ursula reveal an unsolvable problem that continues to plague the conscience of humanity, as it struggles for proper behavior.

    Lawrentian Irony

    D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love has remained the novelist’s most complex yet subtle works.  A superficial reading seems to reveal that the two main characters, Rupert Birkin and Ursula Brangwen, are moving toward Lawrence’s notion of the ideal love, that is, unity in love.  

    On the contrary, however, is the fact that the couple’s unsatisfactory marriage highlights the Lawrentian irony that promotes the satire in which the novelist has steeped his most complex novel.

    The Symbol of Fidelity

    In A Reader’s Guide to D. H. Lawrence, Philip Hobsbaum points out that the opal ring that Rupert gives to Ursula symbolizes fidelity.  Of the trio of rings Rupert casually hands Ursula—a sapphire and a topaz as well as the opal—only the opal fits her ring finger.  

    Lawrence’s use of the opal indicates irony; a literal interpretation of the meaning of the opal would render the novel a simplistic story with a happy ending.  A close analysis of the characters in this work and of Lawrence’s idea of modern man’s divided nature reveals that this novel is a highly complex satire of that divided nature.

    Both Hobsbaum and Richard Aldington have applauded Lawrence’s genius for satire as it is demonstrated in Women in Love.  According to Lawrence’s own ethic expounded in Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, “the goal in life is the coming to perfection of each single individual” (100).  

    Lawrence further explains that “recognition of the abysmal other” and “the twofold passionate flux of sympathetic love, subjective abdominal and objective devotional” must balance and be equally accepted by the individual.  Individuals must achieve this equilibrium before they can experience an ideal relationship.

    The Lawrentian Balance

    According to his ideas of equilibrium, Lawrence creates the characters of his novels who thus satirize the imbalance in modern man and woman.  Ursula, at the point in the novel that she is fitted with the ring symbolizing fidelity, has not achieved the Lawrentian balance.  And neither has the character, Rupert, who is about to become her lover.  Both Rupert and Ursula have a void in their lives—a void that they never know how to fill.  

    Ursula’s former lover Skrebensky, whom readers met in The Rainbow, was unable to fill the void for her, and Rupert’s relationship with Hermione has left him empty as well.  Because these characters are not perfected as individuals, they bring their imperfections to their relationships with their lovers.

    That the ring fitting Ursula’s ring finger symbolizes fidelity highlights the irony of their situations.  Neither character—Rupert who gives the ring, nor Ursula whom it fits—is capable of fidelity because they are still unfaithful to their own true nature, the unified nature that knows how to recognize and accept that “abysmal other.”  

    These characters exemplify modern man and woman who have not reached the Lawrentian perfection, whose failure to recognize that they have divided their psyches “has torn the modern world into two halves, the one half warring for the voluntary, objective, separatist control, the other for the pure sympathetic” (100).

    Appearances

    The fact that Rupert and Ursula do marry and verbally declare fidelity effects the situation against which the irony is directed.  Ostensibly, the couple strives to unite, but at the deep personal level where unity ultimately prevails, they remain divided.  According to F. H. Langman, 

    The tale, if we can trust it, simply does not present the marriage of Birkin and Ursula as ideal in itself or as an adequate solution to the problems presented.  On the contrary, an important thesis of the novel is that no fully satisfying personal relationship is possible to people placed, like Birkin and Ursula, in a social and religious vacuum.  (81-82)

    Lawrence emphasizes repeatedly in his Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious: “No human being can develop save through the polarized connection with other beings” (108).  His character Rupert Birkin insists that he cannot feel complete without a deep bond of love with a man as well as with a woman.  

    It is Rupert’s failure to come to terms with his sexual orientation that underscores his split psyche, and his marriage to Ursula cannot serve to weld it.  In his original opening chapter to Women in Love called “A Prologue,” Lawrence explicitly elucidates Rupert’s affinities: 

    He wanted to be in love with a woman.  He wanted all the while to feel this kindled, loving attraction towards a beautiful woman, that he would often feel toward a handsome man.  But he could not.  Whenever it was a case of a woman, there entered in too much spiritual, sisterly love; or else, in reaction, there was only a bestial, callous sort of lust.  (58)

    Lawrence delineates Rupert’s sexual orientation quite clearly in his rejected draft and the impact of Rupert’s repressing that nature becomes the focus, however covert, in the published version.  

    According to George H. Ford, Lawrence decided against the explicit portrayal of Rupert’s same-sex attraction because he feared censorship.  He had just been through the ordeal of censorship with The Rainbow and could not afford it again so soon (39-40).  

    Split Psyche

    Ursula does not relieve Rupert’s burden of a split psyche; she cannot even understand him.  Their violent disagreements continue throughout their relationship.  On occasions, she merely acquiesces to his wishes; an example of this acquiescence is the “Chair” episode.  They purchase an old chair and Rupert declaims against materialism.

    The couple then bickers about the merits of Jane Austen’s England and their own, and finally, for what seems an unmotivated capitulation, Ursula just gives in and says she agrees that they need no possessions, and thus she donates the chair to a young, scruffy-looking city couple whom Lawrence describes as a couple also falling far from his ideal of balance and perfection in love.  

    Lawrence tells readers in his rejected chapter that Rupert is divided against himself:  “he kept this secret [‘his spasmodic affinity for the men he saw’] even from himself” (61).  Because he cannot even bring his feelings before his own scrutiny, he has little hope of making the Lawrentian connection with Ursula—a connection which only balanced beings can achieve.

    Infidelity to Self

    As Langman writes, “The most painful question in the whole novel, a question that precisely reveals the limited value of the experiment in marriage, is Ursula’s question:  ‘why aren’t I enough?’”  (86)  Ursula claims that Rupert is enough for her, and because she feels this way, she cannot come to terms with Rupert’s inclinations.  Rupert has learned to repress his nature, but according to Lawrence, that kind of repression goes against the self—it represents infidelity to the self (Psych. 108).  

    Rupert and Ursula’s relationship, therefore, is not the nourishing meeting of souls that they at times during their affair have claimed it to be.  The opal ring serves as an important device for satirizing that relationship.  The irony that Ursula’s ring finger fits the symbol of fidelity foreshadows the marriage which solves no problems, but, in the words of George H. Ford, “the possibility is left, as in the best of Lawrence’s writings, dangling” (41).

    At the end of the couple’s final conversation, readers observe that they are indeed left only with a possibility.  Rupert and Ursula are still not united but still struggling with conflicting attitudes.  The death of Gerald has left Rupert without a man to love; he says:  “I wanted eternal union with a man too:  another kind of love.”  Ursula counters:  “I don’t believe it.  It’s an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.” 

    Ursula then continues:  “You can’t have two kinds of love.  Why should you!”  And Rupert responds:  “It seems as if I can’t.  Yet I wanted it.”  And Rupert’s and the novel’s final words are:  “‘I don’t believe that,’ he answered.”  Whether this couple ever finds that Lawrentian ideal of perfection no doubt remains a possibility, but the satire remains intact.  The opal ring, symbol of fidelity, fits Ursula’s finger, but the fidelity between the partners remains illusive.

    A slightly abbreviated version of this article first appeared in The Explicator, Volume 46, Number 2, Winter 1988.

    Works Cited

    Aldington, Richard.  Introduction.  Women in Love.  By D. H. Lawrence.  New York:  Viking P, 1960.  ix-xii. Print.

    Ford, George H.  “Notes to Lawrence’s Prologue to Women in Love.”  The Rainbow and Women in Love: A Casebook.  Ed. Colin Clarke.  London: Macmillan, 1969.  35-42. Print.

    Hobsbaum, Philip.  A Reader’s Guide to D. H. Lawrence.  New York:  Thames and Hudson, 1981. Print.

    Langman, F. H.  “Women in Love.”  Critics on D. H. Lawrence:  Readings in Literary Criticism.  Ed. W. T. Andrews.  81-87. Print.

    Lawrence, D. H.  “Prologue to Women in Love.”  The Rainbow and Women in Love: A Casebook.  Ed. Colin Clarke.  London: Macmillan, 1969.  43-64. Print.

    Image: Book cover Women in Love from my personal library

  • Fiftieth Anniversary

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Fiftieth Anniversary

    March 10, 2023

    for Ron

    The years have dressed us in golden threads,
    Warmly woven brighter than those first bright seams.
    Through winter’s bitter and springs remembered,
    We find our love outlives our youthful dreams.

    Our steps did falter on unsteady ground
    Like toddlers with legs weak and unsure.
    Now our roots run deep; patient hearts we found
    And time has given us what only time can secure.

    The orchard has secured us year after year—
    Love walks with joy and promise on the earth.
    Our fallen apples drip and disappear.
    New blossoms crown the harvest with new birth.

    Glad boughs hang low with fruit ripe and sweet—
    God’s grace bestows each new day we greet.

  • Twentieth Anniversary 

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Twentieth Anniversary 

    March 10, 1993

           for Ron

    We have stitched the moments
    into a fine garment of married love
    that takes the cold edge off this world.

    Sometimes like a baby’s fanny
    fresh-diapered, our lives wobble
    on new legs; green apples ripens in time. 

    Wedded bliss rambles in the orchard
    where love and lust bump each other
    until all the apples have fallen

    and the trees sigh with relief.

  • Edgar Lee Masters’ “Julia Miller”

    Image: Edgar Lee Masters https://www.best-poems.net/edgar_lee_masters/index.html#google_vignette
    Image: Edgar Lee Masters

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “Julia Miller”

    Edgar Lee Masters’ American-Innovative sonnet “Julia Miller” from his American classic Spoon River Anthology reveals a troubled soul who leaves the world with the words of Jesus flickering before her eyes.

    Introduction and Text of “Julia Miller”

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “Julia Miller” from his American classic Spoon River Anthology vaguely resembles an American-Innovative sonnet, with its movements seeming to  follow the Italian form as practiced by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her Sonnets from the Portuguese. 

    Masters’ choice of the American-Innovative sonnet likely reveals the notion that he wants to suggest this particular character is more poetic than some others, whose diatribes remain rather prosaic.

    Julia Miller

    We quarreled that morning,
    For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,
    And I was nervous and heavy with the child
    Whose birth I dreaded.
    I thought over the last letter written me
    By that estranged young soul
    Whose betrayal of me I had concealed  
    By marrying the old man.
    Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
    Across the blackness that came over my eyes
    I see the flickering light of these words even now:
    “And Jesus said unto him, Verily  
    I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt  
    Be with me in paradise.”

    Commentary on “Julia Miller”

    Edgar Lee Master’s American-Innovative sonnet reveals a troubled woman who leaves the world with the words of Jesus flickering before her eyes.  The sonnet remains quite minimalist in its execution.  The speaker reveals several pertinent facts about herself but little by way any of in depth thought about her history.

    First Movement:  Quarreling with an Old Man

    We quarreled that morning,
    For he was sixty-five, and I was thirty,
    And I was nervous and heavy with the child
    Whose birth I dreaded.

    In Masters’ first movement, which corresponds to the first octave quatrain of the Italian sonnet, the speaker begins cryptically by asserting, “[w]e quarreled that morning.” She then reveals that it is an old man with whom she has quarreled, “[f]or he was sixty-five, and I was thirty.”  But she seems not to want to reveal too much too soon.

    Julia, however, continues to disclose that she is quite far along in pregnancy and that she was not happy about giving birth to this child; in fact, she says that she dreads the coming birth.  At this point, the reader might assume that the young woman is an unwed woman and has quarreled with her own father. 

    Second Movement:  Speculation

    I thought over the last letter written me
    By that estranged young soul
    Whose betrayal of me I had concealed  
    By marrying the old man.

    The second movement, which echoes the second quatrain in the octave of the Italian sonnet, unlocks the mystery that Julia has been slowly narrating.  She reveals that she had been thinking about “the last letter written me” by a young man, whom she describes as “that estranged young soul.”

    It turns out that Julia married the old man, with whom she has just quarreled, to cover up the fact that this “estranged young soul” had impregnated her and then deserted her.   Had Julia admitted to the old man her true reason for becoming his wife?  She allows the listener only to speculate.

    Third Movement:  Suicide

    Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
    Across the blackness that came over my eyes
    I see the flickering light of these words even now:

    The third movement then takes its form from the first tercet of the sextet of the Italian sonnet form.   In this movement, Julia reports that she has taken morphine “and sat down to read.”  She is committing suicide, and as she waits for death, she sees “the flickering light” of some words.  And she asserts that even after death, she still continues to see those words.

    Fourth Movement:  Flickering Words

    “And Jesus said unto him, Verily  
    I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt  
    Be with me in paradise.”

    The final movement, which completes the Italianesque echo of the second tercet of the sextet, features the Bible verse with which Julia Miller leaves this world. From the Bible verse, the implication arises that Julia feels rather optimistic about her journey after death as she takes the words of Jesus the Christ with her:

    And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. (KJV Luke 23:43)

    In addition to fixing the text into three lines, Masters’ made only two other small changes to the quotation: he inserts a hyphen in the word “Today,” and then he reverses the order from the original “shalt thou” to “thou shalt.”

    A Chosen Few

    One might speculate that Masters wanted to infuse certain narrators with a more poetic spirit than others; thus he employs certain poetic forms to reveal those individuals.   Oddly enough, it seems that “Julia Miller” is one of those chosen few.  Masters’ choices, as he dramatizes his characters, could infuse and inform a marvelous character-study of not only the speakers in the epitaphs but also of Edgar Lee Masters himself.

  • Indulgence’s Reward  

    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Indulgence’s Reward  

    You will cut the name
    out of your brain,
    your heart will complain.
    You will shed tears

    then return to empty pages
    that fill you with words
    as if they were sons and daughters.
    You will shed words

    like old coats
    and they will grow cold
    without a body.
    You are not a prophet,

    just practiced in good-byes, 
    impaled upon the sword 
    of this world whose love 
    turns a knife in its own heart.

  • Edgar Lee Masters’ “Flossie Cabanis”

    Image:  Edgar Lee Masters -  Alchetron https://alchetron.com/Edgar-Lee-Masters
    Image:  Edgar Lee Masters –  Alchetron

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “Flossie Cabanis”

    Flossie Cabanis bemoans two great failures in her life:  fame as a Broadway star and a relationship with a rising “romantic actor.”

    Introduction and Text of “Flossie Cabanis”

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “Flossie Cabanis” from his American classic Spoon River Anthology features a drama queen who wishes that “Duse could stand amid the pathos / Of these quiet fields / And read these words.”

    Flossie alludes to the Italian actress, Eleonora Duse, who was noted for making lavish, sweeping statements, such as “If I had my will, I would live in a ship on the sea and never come nearer to humanity than that!”

     Flossie Cabanis 

    From Bindle’s opera house in the village  
    To Broadway is a great step.
    But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
    When sixteen years of age,  
    Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village
    By Ralph Barrett, the coming
    Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.  
    True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
    When Ralph disappeared in New York,  
    Leaving me alone in the city—
    But life broke him also.  
    In all this place of silence  
    There are no kindred spirits.
    How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos  
    Of these quiet fields
    And read these words.

    Commentary on “Flossie Cabanis”

    Flossie Cabanis bemoans two great failures in her life:  fame as a Broadway star and a relationship with a rising “romantic actor.”

    First Movement:  Broadway a Big Step

    From Bindle’s opera house in the village  
    To Broadway is a great step.

    Flossie reports that there is a great difference in stature between “Broadway” and “Bindle’s opera house,” the local playhouse in Spoon River.  She calls that difference a “great step.” 

    Second Movement:   Stage Stirred Her Soul

    But I tried to take it, my ambition fired
    When sixteen years of age,  
    Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village
    By Ralph Barrett, the coming
    Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul.  

    The fact that the step was great, however, did not stop Flossie from making the effort by taking that step.  Her ambition was made itself known and became very strong when she was sixteen years old.   At that young age, Flossie attended the play “East Lynne” featuring Ralph Barrett, who was a rising star of stage.  This “romantic actor” stirred this ambition in her soul.

    Third Movement:  New York Ordeal?

    True, I trailed back home, a broken failure,
    When Ralph disappeared in New York,  
    Leaving me alone in the city—

    Completely skipping over her ordeal in New York, Flossie admits that she relocated back to Spoon River and considered herself “a broken failure.”  Not only did she fail in pursuing her acting career, but she also failed to hold on to a relationship with Ralph.  

    She reports that Ralph “disappeared in New York.”  Flossie was thus left alone to fend for herself in New York City.   She has not given any indication about how long she had remained in New York.  Her only focus is on her failures.

    Fourth Movement:  A Failing Pair

    But life broke him also.  
    In all this place of silence  
    There are no kindred spirits.

    Flossie then confides that not only was she a “broken failure,” but so was Ralph.  She does not elaborate, but she does offer a pregnant silence that allows her listener to imagine the pain and disappointment of both would-be stars.

    Flossie then describes Spoon River as a “place of silence” where there exist for her “no kindred spirits.”  Her ambition could not be realized in such a place, for she found no one with whom she could confide or share.

    Fifth Movement:  A Sense of Drama

    How I wish Duse could stand amid the pathos  
    Of these quiet fields
    And read these words.

    The one quality that Flossie continues to retain is her sense of drama.  She expresses the desire to have the melodramatic Italian actress Eleonora Duse stand out in the fields surrounding Spoon River and deliver her lament.  For Flossie those fields are filled with “pathos.”  

    Minimalist Sketch

    Flossie’s minimalist sketch leaves much to the imagination of her listener/reader.  It is only through very broad hints that the reader can interpret Flossie’s true ambitions.   It is possible that her only ambition was to become and remain the mate of Ralph Barrett as he pursued the heights of stardom on the stage.

    Thus it is quite likely that she had no real aspirations of following an acting career for herself.   However, by introducing and alluding to the famous Italian actress, she seems to be presenting Duse as her rôle model; the reader may, therefore, infer that Flossie’s ambition was two-fold:  she wanted both an acting career and a relationship with Barrett but failed at both.

  • Every Time the Words Don’t Speak

    Hooded person leaning on stone bridge railing overlooking river at night with glowing sword and distant castle
    Image Created by Jetpack

    Every Time the Words Don’t Speak

    The mud that gripped your mind
    is the same stuff that oozed
    through your heart that day
    under that early moon.

    The heat on that skin
    dried your eyelids.

    The pressure to win
    keeps many a bloodwalker
    stepping fast across this bridge,

    but that one is too cocksure for that
    and you never dream except for nightmares,
    so what could you lose but your heart,

    once you’d surrendered your mind
    to that mad manhood.
    As sharp as it was,

    it did not stab
    like the knife of the silence
    that twists in your heart
    every time the words don’t speak.