Seth Compton

I get new comments on one of my earliest posts, Why Spoonreader?, every so often, which is great. I hope it means that people interested in Spoon River Anthology are finding this blog. One commenter recently pointed out a poem that had never really made an impression on me before, which is kind of funny, since it's about libraries. You'd think I would have remembered it.
Then later, my friend RF and I were talking about our mixed feelings about small towns, and growing up in small towns. (He grew up in Mansfield, population 5,582. I grew up in Patterson, population 5,130.) Calling it a love-hate relationship vastly oversimplifies it. It's more of a combination of nostalgia, affection, respect, frustration, revulsion and rage. It brought that same poem back to mind.
Anyway, here's the Spoon River poem that gets at all that. Thanks, Naomi!

SETH COMPTON

WHEN I died, the circulating library
Which I built up for Spoon River,
And managed for the good of inquiring minds,
Was sold at auction on the public square,
As if to destroy the last vestige
Of my memory and influence.
For those of you who could not see the virtue
Of knowing Volney’s “Ruins” as well as Butler’s “Analogy”
And “Faust” as well as “Evangeline,”
Were really the power in the village,
And often you asked me,
“What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?”
I am out of your way now, Spoon River,
Choose your own good and call it good.
For I could never make you see
That no one knows what is good
Who knows not what is evil;
And no one knows what is true
Who knows not what is false.