He puts us in some indescribable manner "en rapport"
with the large, cool, liquid spaces and with the immense and
transparent depths.
More than any he is the poet of passionate friendship and the poet of
all those exquisite evasive emotions which arise when our loves and
our regrets are blended with the presence of Nature.
25. EDGAR LEE MASTERS. SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, _published by
Macmillan_.
After Whitman and Poe, Mr. Masters is by far the most original and
interesting of American poets. There is something Chaucerian about the
quizzical and whimsical manner in which he tells his brief and homely
stories. His characters are penetrated with the bleak and yet cheerful
tone of the "Middle West." Something quaint, humorous and astringent
emerges as their dominant note.
Mr. Masters has the massive ironical observation and the shrewd humane
wit of the great English novelists of the eighteenth century. His dead
people reveal "the true truth" of their sordid and troubled lives. The
little chances, the unguessed-at accidents, the undeserved blows of a
capricious destiny, which batter so many of us into helpless
inertness, are the aspects of life which interest him most.
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