Like so many other poems in Spoon River Anthology, we're introduced to our speaker right in the title. Shmoopers, meet Petit, the poet. Again, like his Spoon River compatriots, poor Petit has passed (see our "In a Nutshell" for more). He's actually speaking to us, then… from Beyond The Grave (cue the spooky music).
Don't get too frightened, though. This guy's not here to haunt you. On the contrary, he's the one that's haunted, tortured by a life writing poetry that, well, totally sucked. He finally understands why his poems missed the mark now, but of course it's too late to do much about it (other than, you know, write this one last poem).
The reason he missed the mark so badly, we learn, is that he focused too much on ready-made clichés and fancy forms, forgetting that in poetry what you have to say is just as important as how you say it. He should have taken his cues from his poetic idols like Homer and Walt Whitman, but instead he's stuck with an afterlife of regret and artistic sorrow.
Well, what else would you expect from a fellow named "Petit"? Time for a quick French lesson, gang: "petit" means "little" in French. Translated, our speaker is a little (insignificant) poet. He just doesn't cut the mustard as an artist, and certainly pales in comparison to the biggies.
So why would Edgar Lee Masters, himself a poet, want to depress us all with such a sob story? We think it has something to do with the kind of ground he was looking to break with the Spoon River Anthology. Both in terms of content (straight, gritty talk) and form (free verse—check out "Form and Meter" for the specifics), Masters was into new territory with his collection. Some critics loved him for it, while others just couldn't handle such a radical shift. And can you guess what this shift was moving from? It was the exact same form-focused, backwards-looking poetry that Petit himself is guilty of writing.
So, our speaker functions as a kind of straw man in this poem, propped up as a representative of all the bad poetry Masters was trying to fight against with these new techniques. Way to go, Petit, you played the role of awful poet perfectly.