Heres a virtual movie of the American poet, biographer, and dramatist Edgar Lee Masters reading the poem “Fiddler Jones” from his best known anthology of poems “Spoon River Anthology”.
This exquisite whimsical poem asserts that it is the happy memories we make that are realy more important than the money we make in our lives. The first line of the poem refers to the rhythym of the heart, and that you yourself are contained in it, and that when you find your passion, your talent, that is what you must commit yourself to, for all your life. One man will look at the field and see a ready harvest and dollar signs. Fiddler Jones would look at it and see a beautiful passage, beyond which lies the river where he would lie and fiddle days away. Later, in the fall, when the wind sends the corn rustling, the first man hears the rattle of change, for this means it is time to harvest and send the cows to be butchered, which means money in his pocket. Fiddler, on the other hand, is simply reminded of the sound made when the girls dance to his music, the way their skirts swish and rustle. Similarly, to one man, a dry, dusty climate means trouble for his crops and causes him worry, but Fiddler just sees is as a reason to party. How could he work his land, much less worry about obtaining *more* land, which would mean *more* work, when everything around him reminds him of his music, his dancing? Furthermore, during the times he did start to work, someone would come and request him to fiddle at a party, and being a man who knows his values, he’d put down his plow and pick up his fiddle. He didn’t die rich, but he died happy.
Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters’ home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses.
Edgar Lee Masters (Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1868 – Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2010
Fiddler Jones……
The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must and for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest ofclover?
Or a meadow to awlk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
for beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows androbins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And tkae me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories.
And not a single regret.
Duration : 0:1:33
[youtube KL6GiR3ZmxM]
May 10th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
top notch work-
top notch work-