RPO -- Edgar Lee Masters : Margaret Fuller Slack

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)

Margaret Fuller Slack

1I would have been as great as George Eliot

2But for an untoward fate.

3For look at the photograph of me made by Peniwit,

4Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes --

5Gray, too, and far-searching.

6But there was the old, old problem:

7Should it be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity?

8Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,

9Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,

10And I married him, giving birth to eight children,

11And had no time to write.

12It was all over with me, anyway,

13When I ran the needle in my hand

14While washing the baby's things,

15And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.

16Hear me, ambitious souls,

17Sex is the curse of life!

Notes

1] The novelist and poet Mary Ann Evans (1819-80). John E. Hallwas, in Spoon River Anthology: An Annotated Edition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992): 380, identifies Slack as a composite figure of the two wives of Dr. William S. Strode, a Lewistown physician.

3] Peniwit: another of Masters' Spoon River characters.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, illustrated by Oliver Herford (London: T. Werner Laurie, [1916]): 48. 8-NBI Masters New York Public Library
First publication date: 1915
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2003
Recent editing: 1:2003/6/2

Rhyme: mainly unrhyming

Other poems by Edgar Lee Masters