Monday, July 12, 2010

The poem below appeared in the original (1915) edition of Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology, one of my favorite books, ever. Both "Butch" Weldy and Doctor Meyers appear in poems of "their" own.

MINERVA JONES

I am Minerva, the village poetess,
Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
Captured me after a brutal hunt.
He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
Will someone go to the village newspaper,
And gather into a book the verses I wrote?--
I thirsted so for love
I hungered so for life!

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