Spoon River Anthology (Hesperus Classics) [Paperback]

Edgar Lee Masters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004 | Series: Hesperus Classics

In this 1915 collection, Edgar Lee Masters tells the stories of the dead through their own posthumous words. Realistic, often cynical, these epitaphs are spoken from the grave by 244 former citizens of a small Midwestern village. The entire spectrum of human life is represented here—everyone from poet to shopkeeper is given a chance to narrate their life, to tell of their struggles and their thwarted hopes and dreams. With these classic poems, Masters took his revenge on the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of small-town America, revealing it in all its injustice, corruption, and cruelty. Edgar Lee Masters is best known for the Spoon River Anthology. As well as verse, he wrote biographies of fellow writers, including Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

YA-- A richly annotated edition resuscitates a fading American classic. Because Hallivas's pithy introduction adds both perspective and gossipy detail, YAs will enjoy learning about the individual struggles of the 244 characters who speak from the cemetery on "the hill." Secondary teachers will find this a useful tool for preparing character sketches, thanks to the lively, specific annotations naming names: who rejected whom; who challenged whom, both physically and politically--and it is all expertly researched. The microcosm of Spoon River comes alive with its central conflicts of agrarian traditionist v. temperance and abolitionist activism. From the grave, the hard-drinking, roughly hewn frontiersmen challenge the do-good social reformers, reenacting the struggle the 19th-century midwestern push kindled: would any government law prohibiting drinking or slavery impress these strong individual-rights townspeople? They offer their own answers as Masters intended, but they offer the responses against a tapestry of detail the editor provides. Hallivas's cogent essay traces the philosophical influences that marked Masters's works: Spinoza, Goethe, and especially Whitman. The inclusion of several photographs of the characters who speak adds important visual detail.
- Margaret Nolan, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Definitive... Hallwas' reading of 'Spoon River' is undoubtedly the best and the one the poet intended. The Midwest is seens as the New World Eden assaulted by the forces of modernization." -- Chicago Tribune. "Massively annotated... provides a wealth of information." -- The New Republic --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Hesperus Press (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843911086
• ISBN-13: 978-1843911081
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,735,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Are Spoon River, July 21, 2000

By 

A.Trendl HungarianBookstore.com "What should ... (Glen Ellyn, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

There is no Spoon River, IL. Check your map. Several towns argue that they stake their claim in being what Masters asserted to be this mythical town. Petersburg and Lewistown, two towns of otherwise minor repute seem closest... but it is so much better we haven't an actual town... Spoon River's residents are our next door neighbors, whether we live in Central Illinois or Central Florida, or southern Alaska.

Masters has written not fables, but the essence of American life. He hasn't captured the life and times of 1915, but has instead recorded in 1915 the life and times of our present day America.

The same reason the paintings of Norman Rockwell makes sense is why Edgar Lee Masters poetry makes sense. To read the quick messages on the gravestone of one man, learning a little bit him, and something about a neighbor or two, we can learn a little about how we live in communities today.

Our lives, like Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life" found out, interact and impact everyone we meet. Who we love, who we should love and who we reject. And when we die, others feel the loss. Masters has aptly put this in a humorous, yet insightful way into short verses.

The poems don't rhyme. The meter is not solid, and the poetics aren't intricate. They aren't poems like Poe's or Dickinson, not in the way they wrote American poems. Don't expect iambic pentameter-based sonnets or villanelles. Expect a conversation, and listen in.

The poetry here is in the subtle use of social nuance. In the nuances are his insight and wit. Two readings will bring to light what you miss in the first.

Buy this book, read it slow. It reads faster than most poetry book, but don't get caught in the temptation to zoom through each poem just because you can.

After you read it, see the play if it happens to be performed in your town.

I fully recommend it.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Reminder that history is people., March 21, 2000

By 

Andrew H. Scal, [e-mail] (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Paperback)

Spoon River Anthology is an American Classic. It has touched me since my grandfather read parts of it to me more than thirty years ago. Ostensibly it is a collection of autobiographical poems of the silent inhabitants of the town's graveyard. The broad theme, the book's strategy, is the great sweep of what America was like in the nineteenth century. The stories of their lives; joys and sorrows, successes and failures, loves and hates, and secrets of those people in the graveyard are the tactics. Above all, E.L. Masters exposes the hypocrisy and denial in which people have always lived their lives. Even today, in a much worldlier time than the turn of the century when it was written, the brutal honesty of the citizens shakes our complacency. This is no mellow reflection on the good old days. Its citizens corrupt and are corrupted. They suffer loveless marriages. Men run away to war to escape jail or rejection in love, women suffer stifling lack of opportunity and equality. The citizens die in childbirth or from lockjaw contracted from a cut by a rusty knife. Yet in reading about these lives we understand a little more about what it is to be human. None of us could fail to find some stories that in ways match ours to a greater or lesser extent. An in doing so, be granted in life the level of insight into ourselves and others that these storytellers achieved only after their lives had ended.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone can find themselves (or someone they know) in SRA, June 29, 1999

By 

Julia Conley, [e-mail] (Buckhannon, West Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

I use the Dover edition at Buckhannon-Upshur High School with my ninth grade students each spring. Even the kids who say they hate poetry end up liking this book. We read the poems as pieces of a puzzle, trying to put the people and their problems together. We only get about one third of the book done in class, but most of the students read more on their own time. There's a new one--students reading for pleasure!