Spoon River Anthology

This book has moved me more than anything else Ive read in recent years, and I highly recommend that othes read this outstanding work of art.

Masters has written not fables, but the essence of American life. He hasnt 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 Stewarts character in "Its 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 dont rhyme. The meter is not solid, and the poetics arent intricate. They arent poems like Poes or Dickinson, not in the way they wrote American poems. Dont 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 dont 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

Read more carefully. Spoon River Anthology is a timeless portrait of the human story. Each character is different, yet all are part of the composite of a small town. It could have been a big city or a widespread area with few people. The stories would differ in fact, perhaps, but the tale would be same.

You will meet over a hundred matchless, never-to-be-forgotten characters, including George Gray, who wasted his life by shrinking from it, A.D. Blood, the town prohibitionist, who hated liquor so much he killed a man who was drunk, a politician, Hamilton Greene, whose mother was actually a servant girl to his father, but who never knew it, people who scorned life and were scorned by it in turn, people who loved life despite its adversity, people who wantonly ruined the lives of others, people who were dashed against lifes shoals by the ruthless, people who were buried in the wrong grave, and on, and on, and on. Each page is a precious gem reflecting someone you know, or even part of you, large or small. The English is beyond merely superb. It is simply scintillating, and so astoundingly good in terms of word and vocabulary selection as to leave the reader amazed.

One facet that was most enjoyable was the number of attorneys and judges who spoke. Masters, of course, practiced law for a number of years, and used this experience to depict realistic portraits of many lawyers, all of whom anyone in the law knows all to well.

Carefully perused, the work is truly a novel, not a mere series of poems, and a great novel. Masters apparently poured his whole being into the effort, since he never remotely produced anything of its quality again.

Buy, read it a bit at a time. You will treasure it always. My recommendation is so high as to be off the scale.