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    Spoon River Anthology
    Spoon River Anthology
    Spoon River Anthology
    Ebook194 pages2 hours

    Spoon River Anthology

    By Edgar Lee Masters

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1916
    Author

    Edgar Lee Masters

    Edgar LeeMasters (1868–1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. Born in Garnett, Kansas to attorney Hardin Wallace Masters and Emma Jerusha Dexter, they later moved to Lewistown, Illinois, where Masters attended high school and had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News. After working in his father’s law office, he was admitted to the Illinois State Bar and moved to Chicago. In 1898 he married Helen M. Jenkins and had three children. Masters died on March 5, 1950, in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, at the age of eighty-one. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois.

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    Reviews for Spoon River Anthology

    4/5

    459 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Heard about this for the first time while reading Richard Price's Samaritan. It's a tremendous achievement. Witty and dour, morbid and feather-light. I will have to dip back into it again for all human life can be found within.
    • 4/5
      Whether because of emotional connections to the moments when I discovered individual poems, or the fact that such close study in acting class yoked me to this book (both figuratively and literally), I adore Masters' concept and his execution. It is perhaps not perfect, and yet could anyone pull this off personally? Either way, I'm never going to be objective about this book, so I shan't waste time trying!
    • 4/5
      holds up very well
    • 5/5
      Astonishing! Wonderful!
    • 3/5
      Some of the writing, albeit morbid, is downright delicious. Best taken in small doses, however. He beats the theme like a dead horse. I pride myself on a high tolerance for grief and morbidity, and I could only make it halfway through. Not surprising that James Franco made a contest of adapting it into a short film. There are about eight minutes' worth of gripping, compelling, poetry in this book. Save the rest for when you're feeling Poe-ish, or have just gone through a break-up and want to read about a caste of characters who are all worse off than you.
    • 5/5
      I read this after seeing the play version and absolutely fell in love with Masters stories.
    • 4/5
      Indeholder "Introduction", "The Hill", "Hod Putt", "Ollie McGee", "Fletcher McGee", "Robert Fulton Tanner", "Cassius Hueffer", "Serepta Mason", "Amanda Barker", "Constance Hately", "Chase Henry", "Harry Carey Goodhue", "Judge Somers", "Kinsey Keene", "Benjamin Pantier", "Mrs Benjamin Pantier", "Reuben Pantier", "Emily Sparks", "Trainor, the Druggist", "Daisy Fraser", "Benjamin Fraser", "Minerva Jones", "'Indignation' Jones", "Doctor Meyers", "Mrs Meyers", "'Butch' Weldy", "Knowlt Hoheimer", "Lydia Puckett", "Frank Drummer", "Hare Drummer", "Conrad Siever", "Doc Hill", "Andy the night-watch", "Sarah Brown", "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "Flossie Cabanis", "Julia Miller", "Johnnie Sayre", "Charlie French", "Zenas Witt", "Theodore the Poet", "The Town Marshal", "Jack McGuire", "Dorcas Gustine", "Nicholas Bindle", "Jacob Goodpasture", "Harold Arnett", "Margaret Fuller Slack", "George Trimble", "Dr. Siegfried Iseman", "'Ace' Shaw", "Lois Spear", "Justice Arnett", "Willard Fluke", "Aner Clute", "Lucius Atherton", "Homer Clapp", "Deacon Taylor", "Sam Hookey", "Cooney Potter", "Fiddler Jones", "Nellie Clark", "Louise Smith", "Herbert Marshall", "George Gray", "Hon. Henry Bennett", "Griffy the Cooper", "A. D. Blood", "Robert Southey Burke", "Dora Williams", "Mrs Williams", "William and Emily", "The Circuit Judge", "Blind Jack", "John Horace Burleson", "Nancy Knapp", "Barry Holden", "State's Attorney Fallas", "Wendell P. Bloyd", "Francis Turner", "Franklin Jones", "John M. Church", "Russian Sonia", "Isa Nutter", "Barney Hainsfeather", "Petit, the Poet", "Pauline Barrett", "Mrs. Charles Bliss", "Mrs. George Reece", "Rev. Lemuel Wiley", "Thomas Ross, Jr.", "Rev. Abner Peet", "Jefferson Howard", "Judge Selah Lively", "Albert Schirding", "Jonas Keene", "Eugenia Todd", "Yee Bow", "Washington McNeely", "Paul McNeely", "Mary McNeely", "Daniel M'Cumber", "Georgine Sand Miner", "Thomas Rhodes", "Ida Chicken", "Penniwit, the Artist", "Jim Brown", "Robert Davidson", "Elsa Wertman", "Hamilton Greene", "Ernest Hyde", "Roger Heston", "Amos Sibley", "Mrs. Sibley", "Adam Weirauch", "Ezra Bartlett", "Amelia Garrick", "John Hancock Otis", "Anthony Findlay", "John Cabanis", "The Unknown", "Alexander Throckmorton", "Jonathan Swift Somers (Author of the Spooniad)", "Widow McFarlane", "Carl Hamblin", "Editor Whedon", "Eugene Carman", "Clarence Fawcett", "W. Lloyd Garrison Standard", "Professor Newcomer", "Ralph Rhodes", "Mickey M'Grew", "Rosie Roberts", "Oscar Hummel", "Roscoe Purkapile", "Mrs Purkapile", "Josiah Tompkins", "Mrs. Kessler", "Harmon Whitney", "Bert Kessler", "Lambert Hutchins", "Lillian Stewart", "Hortense Robbins", "Batterton Dobyns", "Jacob Godbey", "Tom Beatty", "Roy Butler", "Searcy Foote", "Edmund Pollard", "Thomas Trevelyan", "Percival Sharp", "Hiram Scates", "Peleg Poague", "Jeduthan Hawley", "Abel Melveny", "Oaks Tutt", "Elliott Hawkins", "Voltaire Johnson", "English Thornton", "Enoch Dunlap", "Ida Frickey", "Seth Compton", "Felix Schmidt", "Shrœder the Fisherman", "Richard Bone", "Silas Dement", "Dillard Sissman", "Jonathan Houghton", "E C Culbertson", "Shack Dye", "Hildrup Tubbs", "Henry Tripp", "Granville Calhoun", "Henry C Calhoun", "Alfred Moir", "Dippold the Optician", "Magrady Graham", "Archibald Higbie", "Tom Merritt", "Mrs. Merritt", "Elmer Karr", "Elizabeth Childers", "Edith Conant", "Charles Webster", "Father Malloy", "Ami Green", "Calvin Campbell", "Henry Layton", "Harlan Sewall", "Ippolit Konovaloff", "Henry Phipps", "Harry Wilmans", "John Wasson", "Many Soldiers", "Godwin James", "Lyman King", "Caroline Branson", "Anne Rutledge", "Hamlet Micure", "Mabel Osborne", "William H. Herndon", "Rebecca Wasson", "Rutherford McDowell", "Hannah Armstrong", "Lucinda Matlock", "Davis Matlock", "Herman Altman", "Jennie M'Grew", "Columbus Cheney", "Wallace Ferguson", "Marie Bateson", "Tennessee Claflin Shope", "Plymouth Rock Joe", "Imanuel Ehrenhardt", "Samuel Gardner", "Dow Kritt", "William Jones", "William Goode", "J. Milton Miles", "Faith Matheny", "Scholfield Huxley", "Willie Metcalf", "Willie Pennington", "The Village Atheist", "John Ballard", "Julian Scott", "Alfonso Churchill", "Zilpha Marsh", "James Garber", "Lydia Humphrey", "Le Roy Goldman", "Gustav Richter", "Arlo Will", "Captain Orlando Killion", "Jeremy Carlisle", "Joseph Dixon", "Judson Stoddard", "Russell Kincaid", "Aaron Hatfield", "Isaiah Beethoven", "Elijah Browning", "Webster Ford", "The Spooniad".De handler alle om livet og døden i en lille by. Mange hemmeligheder kommer frem og ikke alle er lige artige.
    • 4/5
      I can appreciate why, at the time of its publication in 1915, the book was seen as creative in its structure -- lots of short poems, each in the voice or a different deceased former resident of the town of Spoon River, Illinois -- and bracingly blunt in its substance. Some of the deceased admit to having committed murder or adultery; others offer sardonic reflections - all is vanity and chasing the wind. Since then, of course, the themes have become commonplace, and been explored with greater nuance and explicitness elsewhere. The structure has been imitated in other works - a prose example is the book 253, by Geoff Ryman, with each chapter about a different passenger on an ill-fated subway train. While the Spoon River Anthology now seems relatively tame, it's still enjoyable, and the trick of offering one story from a handful of radically divergent points of view still works. Many of the poems are forgettable, but some are haunting: Mickey M'Grew, who died cleaning the town water tank; Conrad Siever, buried under one of his apple trees; Mrs. Sibley, pastor's wife and free spirit; Elsa Wertman, German immigrant and mother of a successful politician who has no idea he is her son.
    • 3/5
      This is a conceptually intriguing book in which the residents (represented by over 200 poems) of a small town cemetery speak from the grave about the truth as they see it, being free from social pressure or potential retribution to present themselves or others in a good light.I think it's important to remember that Masters was a lawyer by profession, a person who had heard people's testimonies about incidents and different people and had seen how judges and juries dealt with them. This book isn't simply about a small town, it's about humanity and justice, sometimes in the legal sense and sometimes in the larger sense. It's also about how people perceive themselves and others. We get more than one perspective on different characters or events that come up as the individuals speak.This is a book-length work that was written in sections that appeared serially before being collected into a single volume. As many people note, the poems at the beginning of the book are almost unremittingly depressing. They're largely about people who experienced injustice or floundered in the face of events they couldn't control. This lets up in the last third of the book, though not necessarily to good effect. I felt that Masters continued the project after it's vital energy had waned.Women may be a little dissatisfied with the book because so few women are represented, 50 out of 244, and often in stereotypical ways. This isn't surprising considering that most of these poems appeared before women had even been granted the right to vote. Though the lack of representation is still a disappointment, it's worth acknowledging that he did give women a voice and laid bare some injustices toward them and community attitudes toward stereotypes represented that were unjust. He doesn't let things be simple.The copy I read had a had an introduction by John Hollander and footnotes clarifying the many historical and literary allusions in the poems. I highly recommend people get a volume with the footnotes.Much has been written about this work. In fact, it's the only book of poetry I've ever heard of that has its own website (spoonriveranthology.net), essentially a fan site. It's worth reading and rereading. By the end, I the many people/poems had become a blur and I'm not able to say which were my favorites. The next time through I'll mark them. And there will definitely be a next time through. Not all of the poems were great but many of them were superb and I'd like to find them again.I don't think this book is for everyone but it struck me as a good book to have students read and discuss at the high school level because if offers so much to talk about, whether matters of poetics or history or justice. I intend to give a copy to my brother, who is a lawyer and would appreciate the many perspectives that turn up in the book. I also think any serious student of poetry should read it as an example of a big project. In our formal education, we so rarely presented with even remotely contemporary examples of book-length poems or projects. I was quite miffed to be left clueless about this book until running into it at my local library.I want to warn the readers of this review that Spoon River Anthology is generally considered the only work of Masters worth preserving. As John Hollander put it, a "quite uninspired poet, who in the unique format, and under imaginative pressures, excelled himself by producing a masterpiece." His other poetry is very conventional rhymed verse and only in throwing off convention in middle age was he able to speak in a variety of voices and from a variety of perspectives to produce this fascinating work.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1915, each poem in this volume is a monologue spoken by a dead person. It is as if the reader is visiting a cemetery in the fictional town of Spoon River, and each name on a tombstone speaks for himself or herself. People from all walks of society are here. Much is revealed here. The reader often understands what each person is trying to say. It’s not necessarily all morbid or maudlin.
    • 5/5
      Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses.
    • 4/5
      The edition I have of this book was published in 1915 shortly after the poems were serialized in" Reedy's Mirror".The book begins with the poem "The Hill" which introduces the reader to the town cemetery. The residents of the cemetery tell the tale of their lives in remainder of the poems. The author does a good job of telling a short story in two or three paragraphs of verse. There are separate stories from a husband and wife, members of a family or different people involved in the failure of a bank. There is a mixture of humor and tragedy as thethe history of the town unfolds.Towards the end of the book the author runs out of "A" material and I did not care for the last poem "The Spooniad" a nine page contribution attributed to a town resident. All in all it is an entertaining book for the short time it takes to read.
    • 5/5
      An amazing collection of poems, ostensibly the voices of the dead in Spoon River cemetery. Each person has something to say about his or her life, and as you read, you find the poems interlacing and telling more of a story than any of the poems can tell singly. I've loved this collection for years.
    • 5/5
      Masters created a town of Spoon River and lets us look into the goings on there. This is nothing unusual in fiction. However, in this case we see the town through the voices of the dead. Every piece in this collection of free verse is that of one of the former inhabitants speaking from the grave. Some are funny, some of gut-wrenchingly sad, some are inspiring. Some connect together so a bit of a story emerges; many stand along.
    • 4/5
      "You two have seen the secret together,He sees it in you, and you in him.And there you sit thrilling lest the MysteryStand before you and strike you deadWith a splendor like the sun's..." (from "Faith Matheny")
    • 4/5
      Masters weaves a great story between the main characters of these short poems. The over-arching theme, of course, if the irony of "the good life" and "death as the great equalizer," but some of the poems are especially powerful. The inspiration for "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson, many say.
    • 4/5
      For what could have just been a gimmick, it turns out to be surprisingly good.

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    Spoon River Anthology - Edgar Lee Masters

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