![]() ![]() Yet the “meaning” that George Gray’s tombstone insists we find is far more terrible than what Masters portrayed as the ignorance, bigotry, and hypocrisy of traditional, religious small-town life. The continued resonance of Gray’s words explains why: we all know those who, fearing the unknown, chart the easier and safer course, only to regret their cowardice once it’s too late. Although it is somewhat obscure now, the book was a critical and commercial success when it was first published in 1915, praised by the likes of Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg, and even achieving international bestseller status. Gray’s epitaph is one of the most commonly quoted from the anthology. In some cases, he doesn’t even bother to disguise the real historical person to whom he is referring. One must say “mostly” and “somewhat” because both the characters and the town are based on Masters’s own experiences in Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois. ![]() So reads the tombstone of the character George Gray in Spoon River Anthology, a series of 244 (mostly) fictionalized tombstone epitaphs written by American poet Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) about the (somewhat) fictitious town of Spoon River, Illinois. It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.Īnd now I know that we must lift the sail ![]() Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. ![]()
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