SOURCE: “Edgar Lee Masters: An Interview,” in Double Dealer, Vol. 2, Nos. 8-9, August-September, 1921, pp. 79-83.

In the following essay, Masters and Yust discuss Masters's poetry.

“My friend,” said Thackeray once, “two different universes walk about under your hat and under mine.” And, when I confess that I have learned chiefly from his brilliant and grim Spoon River Anthology what little I know of the particular universe that walks around under Edgar Lee Masters' felt hat, I am only admitting those limitations of universes in general which must preclude the possibility of any one of them actually knowing even itself. As for Mr. Masters' more recent books, they have revealed to me nothing so poignantly as this—

“That where so much is said One half will never be believed The other never read.” 

But if Spoon River itself afforded merely a glimpse of the universe walking around under Mr...