Articles written by Linda Sue Grimes

Masters' speaker in "Aner Clute" compares her choosing "the life" to a boy stealing an apple from a grocery.

May 14, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

This propagandist piece offers little more that a textbook case study in victimology.

May 4, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

"End of April" merges the finding of an empty robin's egg with the melancholy felt after a experiencing a lost love.

Apr 27, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

"My India" is Paramahansa Yogananda's moving tribute to his native country.

Apr 21, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

The speaker in T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" laments the insipid, vacuous nature of his culture.

Apr 13, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

"Pathetic Woman" is a brilliant piece of political satire that exposes the excesses and obfuscation of the Obama administration.

Apr 5, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

As the first First Lady, Martha Washington set the standard for those Ladies who would follow.

Mar 30, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Wallace Stevens' "The Death of a Soldier" and Walt Whitman's "Look Down, Fair Moon" express two very different attitudes toward their subject.

Mar 23, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Ulysses S. Grant served as the eighteenth president of the United States; he was the second president to serve as a Republican.

Mar 18, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

On March 7, 1952, Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of Self-Realization Fellowship, entered mahasamadhi, an advanced yogi's exodus from the body.

Mar 2, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

The character, Willard Fluke, is spared an ignominious confession but at a great price.

Feb 24, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Clare's speaker is a troubled man who wishes to attain the soul-realization that will take him to the realm of real, pure, true love.

Feb 17, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Justice Arnett is featured in his own poem where he demonstrates weakness and confusion, commensurate with many other fellow citizens of Spoon River.

Feb 10, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Human love is only a reflection of Divine Love, and "in this world [people] do not know how to love [one another]."

Feb 3, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

A religious agnostic muses on the handling of the Bible that had belonged to his wife's grandmother.

Jan 27, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Atwood's piece features a surrealistic drama that reduces the cowboy to a straw man, as the speaker vents her rage against a fantasy.

Jan 20, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

Lois Spears will delight readers who have grown somewhat jaded with the jaded characters offered them in Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Jan 6, 2012 - Linda Sue Grimes

"Ace" Shaw features a typical Spoon River braggart whose report justifies his unseemly choice of profession.

Dec 16, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Comparing her life to a stairway in an extended metaphor, a mother encourages her son to face life, even though it can be full of difficult challenges.

Dec 9, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

An omniscient narrator dramatizes the musings of a man whose thoughts and actions vaguely imply the concept of karma-reaping and sowing.

Dec 2, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

In the New York Times article, "Legends of the Fail," liberal economist Paul Krugman attempts to clarify the reasons for the "eurodebacle."

Nov 28, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Dr. Siegfried Iseman is the typical Spoon River speaker who blames others for his own destructive path.

Nov 25, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Chapman's cowboy tells a humorous little tale about a "drug store toilet set," a new schoolmarm, and a brawl that sent her packing.

Nov 18, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

This Christmas poem narrates an intriguing little story of three lonely cowboys camped far from home who yearn to celebrate a traditional Christmas.

Nov 11, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

George Trimble deems himself a victim of his wife's mischievous goading and now lies unmourned in his Spoon River grave.

Nov 4, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

In Frost's poem, "Directive," the speaker philosophizes about the nature of worldly temporality.

Oct 28, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Named for America's first feminist writer, Margaret Fuller Slack laments motherhood that crushed her dreams of greatness in becoming the next George Eliot.

Oct 21, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Johnson's speaker offers an imaginative, dramatic rendering of the origin of creation.

Oct 14, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

A woman who has aborted a number of her babies seeks redemption and solace as she examines her decisions.

Oct 7, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

After committing suicide, Harold Arnett confirms the futility of the act.

Sep 30, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

The speaker of Dickinson's Indian summer poem dramatizes the emotional state that overtakes her as her beloved summer season passes into the bitter seasons.

Sep 23, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Kowit's whimsical villanelle makes fun of both the poetry form and the ultimate utility of the elementary grammar lesson.

Sep 16, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Jacob Goodpasture lamented the outbreak of the Civil War, not only because he lost his soldier son to it, but also because he deems that war unjust.

Sep 9, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Donne's "The Bait," which parodies Marlowe's famous love poem, provides the characteristic Donnean passionate plea to win the love of his lady.

Sep 2, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Johnson's speaker reveals by questions his astonishment that a slave culture could effect with music the upliftment of a race down through the centuries.

Aug 26, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Nicholas Bindle is one of the unhappy dead who have unkind words for the citizens of Spoon River.

Aug 19, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

In this simple observation of nature, the speaker demonstrates his awareness of the divinity suffused throughout the scene.

Aug 12, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Dorcas Gustine did not let any grievance go unchallenged, and a large amount of post-mortem pride is displayed in the character's report from beyond.

Aug 5, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

A young woman suffers anguish over her lover's going off to war.

Jul 29, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

The ardent speaker in Paramahansa Yogananda's "Mystery" metaphorically renders the mysterious cosmos as "inky cloud," "staring sky," and "rough sea."

Jul 22, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Jack McGuire escapes a lynch mob, and more is learned about the marshal he shot.

Jul 15, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

The speaker in Linda Pastan's poem, "Traveling Light," uses preparation for a short journey to dramatize the guesswork involved in prediction.

Jul 8, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

The sound of camp gear clanging as the horses plod along becomes a melancholy image that ties this ballad together as it concludes in sorrow.

Jul 1, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

The town marshal, hired by prohibitionists, is a man named Logan, who meets his demise because of his bullying personality.

Jun 24, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

A city-dweller imagines what his life would be like if he could trade places with a drover (cowboy) in the outback.

Jun 17, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Masters' "Theodore the Poet" contemplates the purpose of life through his observation of a crawfish and later people.

Jun 10, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Out of the darkness comes a light whose power can alter the black night and cause the soul to transcend all earthly despair.

Jun 3, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

One of Edgar Lee Masters' more vague speakers from the grave, Zenas Witt does make it clear that he suffered a miserable existence from age sixteen.

May 27, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

In Whitman's "Miracles," the speaker catalogues all the miracles he finds as he goes through life, concluding that he has encountered nothing but miracles.

May 20, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes

Although flawed by an inaccurate allusion and political propaganda, this rap piece offers a useful "conscious" art experience in its call for peace.

May 17, 2011 - Linda Sue Grimes