Call Me Davebot (Ogre) 3000

What i truly love about Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology is Masters’ way of capturing a mature, experienced human being, and within a few lines, tell the reader a very believable, chilling version of what their last words would have been.  I also like how some of the poems stick to a primitive dilemma, or a small thing that someone once did.  And i especially liked how without saying tersely, Masters conveys a sense of immaturity, or content in different characters.  Like in my most recent readings, I read the poem William and Emily.  It is a joint love story in which they continue to love each other as they grow old together.  I felt like they were completely satisfied with their life, and ending it “as (if they ) were in each other’s arms.”  I also saw that some characters bickered even after life.  Like with the Pantiers and the Williams, and A.D. Blood.  Mr. Masters creates characters so real, it would be believable to say that he created their whole life, and then wrote a poem about it.

This most recent reading, I particularly enjoyed the poem, John Horace Burleson.   I saw him as a man who had such potential in writing, but rather than force himself to continue his passion, he is forced into a life with no time for passion.  All he says about his wife is that she was the banker’s daughter.  To me, that shows that he didn’t care for her too much.  I think that from all his experience and success in the big city of Chicago, he was more comfortable at his home town, where he had his writing, which was his real love.  The part of his last words that struck me most, was the last line of it.  ”Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!”  I think that he was satisfied with what he did in life.  Accepting that whatever was done, was done, and he would continue, as well as the world, to roll on like the ocean he alludes to.

I would think that John Horace Burton looks like this in his writing days.

Cassius Hueffer is by far the most powerful poem of this reading.  From my perspective, it seemed that Cassius was a very manly and courageous man who was pretty much like this.  And it is said that he was mixed in with the elements of nature, which leads me to believe he could have been a lumberjack, or some sort of handy man.  He was well liked, and respected, especially by the formidable epitaph he was given.

From his point of view however, he blames his death on how “he made warfare on life,” and because of that,  ”he was slain.”  It’s an interesting thing to say because if we saw Cassius as a man who worked well in nature, or was good with his hands, we would say that he was in harmony with nature, not the opposite.  His point is interesting because he went against nature, and tried to control it and be a powerful man, even such where “nature might stand up and say the all the world, this was a man.”

Much like Robert Fulton Tanner’s last words, when one defies or tries to control nature, life, or the ogre, it can just as easily destroy you as when it gives you rewards, like a good reputation, with Cassius, or wealth and power, with Robert.   If i could revive Cassius, it would be interesting to hear his answer to the question, If one is not supposed to wage war on life, and desire power and the things that stem from it, how and why should one live their life?  Is there a purpose beyond one’s life and the quest to better ones self?