{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/editor-whedon",
 "title": "Editor Whedon",
 "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": 126,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 58,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "To be able to see every side of every question;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To use great feelings and passions of the human family",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For base designs, for cunning ends,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To wear a mask like the Greek actors⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your eight-page paper⁠—behind which you huddle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bawling through the megaphone of big type:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“This is I, the giant.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poisoned with the anonymous words",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of your clandestine soul.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To scratch dirt over scandal for money,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And exhume it to the winds for revenge,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or to sell papers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To win at any cost, save your own life.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And derails the express train.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be an editor, as I was.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then to lie here close by the river over the place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the sewage flows from the village,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And abortions are hidden.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}