Spoon River Anthology

By Edgar Lee Masters

The renowned poet’s classic collection of free verse exploring the lives of colorful characters in a fictional American small town.

In 1914, Edgar Lee Masters began writing a series of poems inspired by his early life in Western Illinois. These poems, which appeared in the St. Louis literary journal Reedy’s Mirror, were later published in book form as the Spoon River Anthology.

Innovative in both conception and style, these free verse poems take on the voices of characters who reveal the sordid secrets of their Midwestern hamlet from beyond the grave. Through interwoven stories of deceit, corruption, and infidelity, a sweeping tale of a town and its people emerges, bringing with it a knowing indictment of small-town hypocrisy that influenced a generation of authors, including Theodore Dreiser and William Faulkner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504083515

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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spoon river anthology

Edgar Lee Masters

The Hill

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,

The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?

All, all are sleeping on the hill.

One passed in a fever,

One was burned in a mine,

One was killed in a brawl,

One died in a jail,

One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,

The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—

All, all are sleeping on the hill.

One died in shameful child-birth,

One of a thwarted love,

One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,

One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire;

One after life in far-away London and Paris

Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,

And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,

And Major Walker who had talked

With venerable men of the revolution?—

All, all are sleeping on the hill.

They brought them dead sons from the war,

And daughters whom life had crushed,

And their children fatherless, crying—

All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

Where is Old Fiddler Jones

Who played with life all his ninety years,

Braving the sleet with bared breast,

Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,

Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?

Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,

Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,

Of what Abe Lincoln said

One time at Springfield.

Hod Putt

Here I lie close to the grave

Of Old Bill Piersol,

Who grew rich trading with the Indians, and who

Afterwards took the Bankrupt Law

And emerged from it richer than ever

Myself grown tired of toil and poverty

And beholding how Old Bill and others grew in wealth

Robbed a traveler one Night near Proctor’s Grove,

Killing him unwittingly while doing so,

For which I was tried and hanged.

That was my way of going into bankruptcy.

Now we who took the bankrupt law in our respective ways

Sleep peacefully side by side.

Ollie McGee

Have you seen walking through the village

A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?

That is my husband who, by secret cruelty

Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;

Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,

And with broken pride and shameful humility,

I sank into the grave.

But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?

The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!

These are driving him to the place where I lie.

In death, therefore, I am avenged.

Fletcher McGee

She took my strength by minutes,

She took my life by hours,

She drained me like a fevered moon

That saps the spinning world.

The days went by like shadows,

The minutes wheeled like stars.

She took the pity from my heart,

And made it into smiles.

She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay,

My secret thoughts were fingers:

They flew behind her pensive brow

And lined it deep with pain.

They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,

And drooped the eye with sorrow.

My soul had entered in the clay,

Fighting like seven devils.

It was not mine, it was not hers;

She held it, but its struggles

Modeled a face she hated,

And a face I feared to see.

I beat the windows, shook the bolts.

I hid me in a corner

And then she died and haunted me,

And hunted me for life.

Robert Fulton Tanner

If a man could bite the giant hand

That catches and destroys him,

As I was bitten by a rat

While demonstrating my patent trap,

In my hardware store that day.

But a man can never avenge himself

On the monstrous ogre Life.

You enter the room—that’s being born;

And then you must live—work out your soul,

Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:

A woman with money you want to marry,

Prestige, place, or power in the world.

But there’s work to do and things to conquer—

Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.

At last you get in—but you hear a step:

The ogre, Life, comes into the room,

(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)

To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,

And stare with his burning eyes at you,

And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,

Running up and down in the trap,

Until your misery bores him.

Cassius Hueffer

They have chiseled on my stone the words:

"His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him

That nature might stand up and say to all the world,

This was a man."

Those who knew me smile

As they read this empty rhetoric.

My epitaph should have been:

"Life was not gentle to him,

And the elements so mixed in him

That he made warfare on life

In the which he was slain."

While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,

Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph

Graven by a fool!

Serepta Mason

My life’s blossom might have bloomed on all sides

Save for a bitter wind which stunted my petals

On the side of me which you in the village could see.

From the dust I lift a voice of protest:

My flowering side you never saw!

Ye living ones, ye are fools indeed

Who do not know the ways of the wind

And the unseen forces

That govern the processes of life.

Amanda Barker

Henry got me with child,

Knowing that I could not bring forth life

Without losing my own.

In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.

Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived

That Henry loved me with a husband’s love

But I proclaim from the dust

That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

Constance Hately

You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,

In rearing Irene and Mary,

Orphans of my older sister!

And you censure Irene and Mary

For their contempt for me!

But praise not my self-sacrifice.

And censure not their contempt;

I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!—

But I poisoned my benefactions

With constant reminders of their dependence.

Chase Henry

In life I was the town drunkard;

When I died the priest denied me burial

In holy ground.

The which redounded to my good fortune.

For the Protestants bought this lot,

And buried my body here,

Close to the grave of the banker Nicholas,

And of his wife Priscilla.

Take note, ye prudent and pious souls,

Of the cross—currents in life

Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame

Harry Carey Goodhue

You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,

When Chase Henry voted against the saloons

But none of you was keen enough

To follow my steps, or trace me home

As Chase’s spiritual brother.

Do you remember when I fought

The bank and the courthouse ring,

For pocketing the interest on public funds?

And when I fought our leading citizens

For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?

And when I fought the water works

For stealing streets and raising rates?

And when I fought the business men

Who fought me in these fights?

Then do you remember:

That staggering up from the wreck of defeat,

And the wreck of a ruined career,

I slipped from my cloak my last ideal,

Hidden from all eyes until then,

Like the cherished jawbone of an ass,

And smote the bank and the water works,

And the business men with prohibition,

And made Spoon River pay the cost

Of the fights that I had lost.

Judge Somers

How does it happen, tell me,

That I who was most erudite of lawyers,

Who knew Blackstone and Coke

Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech

The court-house ever heard, and wrote

A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese

How does it happen, tell me,

That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,

While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,

Has a marble block, topped by an urn

Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,

Has sown a flowering weed?

Kinsey Keene

Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;

Coolbaugh Whedon, editor of the Argus;

Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;

A. D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;

And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club—

Your attention to Cambronne’s dying words,

Standing with the heroic remnant

Of Napoleon’s guard on Mount Saint Jean

At the battle field of Waterloo,

When Maitland, the Englishman, called to them:

Surrender, brave Frenchmen!—

There at close of day with the battle hopelessly lost,

And hordes of men no longer the army

Of the great Napoleon

Streamed from the field like ragged strips

Of thunder clouds in the storm.

Well, what Cambronne said to Maitland

Ere the English fire made smooth the brow of the hill

Against the sinking light of day

Say I to you, and all of you,

And to you, O world.

And I charge you to carve it

Upon my stone.

Benjamin Pantier

Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,

And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.

Down the gray road, friends, children, men and women,

Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone

With Nig for partner, bed-fellow; comrade in drink.

In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory,

The she, who survives me, snared my soul

With a snare which bled me to death,

Till I, once strong of will, lay broken, indifferent,

Living with Nig in a room back of a dingy office.

Under my Jaw-bone is snuggled the bony nose of Nig

Our story is lost in silence. Go by, mad world!

Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

I know that he told that I snared his soul

With a snare which bled him to death.

And all the men loved him,

And most of the women pitied him.

But suppose you are really a lady, and have delicate tastes,

And loathe the smell of whiskey and onions,

And the rhythm of Wordsworth’s Ode runs in your ears,

While he goes about from morning till night

Repeating bits of that common thing;

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

And then, suppose;

You are a woman well endowed,

And the only man with whom the law and morality

Permit you to have the marital relation

Is the very man that fills you with disgust

Every time you think of it while you think of it

Every time you see him?

That’s why I drove him away from home

To live with his dog in a dingy room

Back of his office.

Reuben Pantier

Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,

Your love was not all in vain.

I owe whatever I was in life

To your hope that would not

Reviews for Spoon River Anthology

[psalva-706031 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Astonishing! Wonderful!

[carriewuj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a re-read of a classic I love, in anticipation of seeing it on stage. Masters' concept here is still unique and fresh and the short free-verse poems are easy to digest. Told from the graveyard in Spoon River, a small rural Illinois town, each character is essentially sharing his or her epitaph from the other side. How the characters interconnect and how the small town fosters lots of drama and hidden undercurrents of emotion is the truly interesting part. Favorites include: Richard Cory, Lucinda Matlock, Mrs. Merritt, Julia Miller, Chase Henry and many others. It's easy to dip in here and there and it doesn't need to be read cover-to-cover, but it is a worthwhile undertaking.

[asxz-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sarah_beaudette · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bnielsen_30 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jppoetryreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jannemangan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[wildbill_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[merrymary_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[alexthehunn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[zappad0g · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"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")

[tracyjayhawk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[spoko_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For what could have just been a gimmick, it turns out to be surprisingly good.