{"id":25,"date":"2008-06-03T13:12:32","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=25"},"modified":"2008-06-03T13:12:32","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:12:32","slug":"voices-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/voices-of-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices of the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology<\/em>, a 1915 collection of about 250 (mostly short) poems. If not, here’s a quick-quick summary: Over 200 “permanent residents” of a cemetery speak their own epitaphs\/obituaries, in plain free-verse language.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’d like more information, there’s always Wikipedia<\/a>, as well as lots of other sites<\/a> on the Web.<\/p>\n

One of those sites, “the definitive online edition<\/a>,” offers some cool features for wandering through the book’s contents either as published or grouped, e.g., alphabetically, or “dead people who are talked about most.” One of these cool features is the ability to subscribe to a daily-epitaph feed via RSS<\/a> or email<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I really liked today’s “edition,” in which one Hannah Armstrong speaks. I offer it to you here without the obvious political commentary (but boy, is it tempting…).<\/p>\n

I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake
\nTo discharge my sick boy from the army;
\nBut maybe he couldn’t read it.
\nThen I went to town and had James Garber,
\nWho wrote beautifully, write him a letter.
\nBut maybe that was lost in the mails.
\nSo I traveled all the way to Washington.
\nI was more than an hour finding the White House.
\nAnd when I found it they turned me away,
\nHiding their smiles.
\nThen I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him
\nAnd he and my husband worked together
\nAnd all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”
\nAs a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:
\n“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong
\nFrom Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy
\nIn the army.”
\nWell, just in a moment they let me in!
\nAnd when he saw me he broke in a laugh,
\nAnd dropped his business as president,
\nAnd wrote in his own hand Doug’s discharge,
\nTalking the while of the early days,
\nAnd telling stories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, a 1915 collection of about 250 (mostly short) poems. If not, here’s a quick-quick summary: Over 200 “permanent residents” of a cemetery speak their own epitaphs\/obituaries, in plain free-verse language. If you’d like more information, there’s always Wikipedia, as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[11,86,87,88,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-25","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-reading","7":"tag-politics","8":"tag-spoon-river-anthology","9":"tag-epitaphs","10":"tag-war","11":"tag-lincoln","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}