Listening to the Fiddler
"The Earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you." ~ Fiddler Jones, Spoon River Anthology , Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology was required reading in one of my high school English classes. I don't know if that's a common choice or if the fact that Spoon River is an Illinois location might have played a role, but I'm glad this book wound up in my path just the same. It's a collection of poems, each written in the voice of a different "resident" of a small town cemetery. Over the course of the book, you get the singular glints of individual lives, but also the collective glow of shared stories, and a larger picture of the town emerges. In that respect, the literature reflects the way the real world works; A community is bound together by shared experience, but we each have our own perspectives and our own stories to tell. I think this was a big part of the appeal for me and why I have