Poet and novelist, born in Garnett, Kansas, USA. He studied at Knox College, Galesburg IL, was admitted to the bar in 1891, and became a successful lawyer in Chicago. His most memorable work is the Spoon River Anthology (1915), a book of epitaphs in free verse in the form of monologues about a small town community.
His epitaph includes his poem, "To-morrow is My Birthday" from Toward the Gulf (1918):
Good friends, let’s to the fields…
After a little walk and by your pardon,
I think I’ll sleep, there is no sweeter thing.
Nor fate more blessed than to sleep.
I am a dream out of a blessed sleep-
Let’s walk, and hear the lark.
Poetry
Masters first published his early poems and essays under the pseudonym Dexter Wallace (after his mother's maiden name and his father's middle name) until the year 1903, when he joined the lawfirm of Clarence Darrow.
It was in 1914 when Masters truly began developing as a notable American poet, when he began submitting a series of poems (this time under the pseudonym Webster Ford) about his childhood experiences in Western Illinois, which was published in Reedy's Mirror, a St. Louis publication. He published several other volumes of poems including Book of Verses in 1898, Songs and Sonnets in 1910, The Great Valley in 1916, Song and Satires in 1916, The Open Sea in 1921, The New Spoon River in 1924, Lee in 1926, Jack Kelso in 1928, Lichee Nuts in 1930, Gettysburg, Manila, Acoma in 1930, Godbey, sequel to Jack Kelso in 1931, The Serpent in the Wilderness in 1933, Richmond in 1934, Invisible Landscapes in 1935, The Golden Fleece of California in 1936, Poems of People in 1936, The New World in 1937, More People in 1939, Illinois Poems in 1941, and Along the Illinois in 1942.
Masters was awarded the Mark twain Silver Medal in 1936, the Poetry Society of America medal in 1941, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 1942, and the Shelly Memorial Award in 1944.
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