Everyone is some kind of editor

[smokingboot]

Should explain, the following are from a collection of posthumous poems written by inhabitants of the fictional American town of Spoon River.


Editor Whedon

To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
For base designs, for cunning ends,
To wear a mask like the Greek actors-
Your eight page paper - behind which you huddle,
Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
"This is I, the giant."
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
Poisoned with the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.
To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
Or to sell papers.
Crushing reputations, or bodies if need be,
To win at any cost, save your own life.
To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilisation,
As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
And derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I was.
Then to lie here close by the river over the place
Where the sewage flows from the village,
And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
And abortions are hidden.



Carl Hamblin

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
And I was tarred and feathered,
for publishing this on the day the anarchists were hanged in Chicago;
"I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps in front of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her
Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
'She is no respecter of persons.'
Then a youth wearing a red cap
Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
And lo, the lashes had been eaten away
From the oozy eyelids;
The eyeballs were seared with a milky mucus;
The madness of a dying soul
Was written on her face -
But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

- Spoon River Anthology (1915)
Edgar Lee Masters


The choice is your own.