Sometimes, I think we might call the period 1890 to 1914: “America Gets Ghosted.” It seems that all of the texts we’ve read feature various types of ghosts, from Henry Adams “haunt[ing]” the Great Exposition of 1900 to Gilman’s gothic tale of haunted wallpaper to DuBois’s image of Black America as “the swarthy spectre [that] sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.” For Thursday, you’ll sample an actual collection of ghost stories – – Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. This volume of poems was probably the most popular poetry anthology of the first half of the twentieth century. It is also composed entirely of voices speaking from beyond the grave – – literally.
Read the three poems from Masters’ anthology that I’ve collected here and make three annotations (in total). As you make your annotations, try to connect Masters’ poems to images, phrases, metaphors, etc. that you’ve seen in our previous texts – – Adams, Gilman, DuBois.
Also, take a look at the three poems by Edward Arlington Robinson. Again, you’ll want to make three annotations (in total) on the poems. You might notice that Robinson seems to have a thing for “villages” – – the death of villages, return to villages, escape from villages, etc. It’s interesting to note that as Robinson was writing his poems – – the United States was launching into a period of hyper-urbanization. (For instance, about 30,000 people lived in Chicago in 1850; by 1900, that population had boomed to 1.7 million residents.). This context raises an interesting question (explored by both Robinson and Masters): why and how does the disappearance of something generate such powerful emotions? Maybe this is related to the “haunting” that we see throughout all our texts so far.
Try to complete these annotations by Thursday at midnight.
Preview: for Tuesday, we’ll discuss Masters and Robinson in class. We’ll also start talking about Robert Frost, perhaps the most untrustworthy and devious poet in all of the American canon.