{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/barry-holden",
 "title": "Barry Holden",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Lee Masters",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-lee-masters",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spoon River Anthology",
 "book_slug": "spoon-river-anthology",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 77,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1916,
  "venue": "Spoon River Anthology (1916)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology",
  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://web.archive.org/web/20080723131115/http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/originalOrder/",
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 22,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Set fire to the house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They were trying Dr. Duval",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the murder of Zora Clemens,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I sat in the court two weeks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Listening to every witness.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was clear he had got her in a family way;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to let the child be born",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would not do.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, how about me with eight children,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And one coming, and the farm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when I got home that night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was the hatchet!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And just as I entered there was my wife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Standing before me, big with child.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I killed her.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}