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Summary: A nice stick-it-in-your-pocket edition of a classic
Review: Inspired by The Greek Anthology, a collection of brief poems from the Hellenistic World including epitaphs written from the perspective of the deceased, Edgar Lee Masters wrote a series of monologues spoken by dead townspeople (some more fictional than others) who inhabited Spoon River, the area in Illinois where Abe Lincoln once lived. Real people include Anne Rutledge (Abe's first girlfriend) and Fiddler Jones, who worked in Lincoln's general store as a boy.But this book isn't about Abraham Lincoln. It's about the trait that we will all, both saints and sinners, one day have in common: death. And it is about the small triumphs of life that the dead remember. Just as William Carlos Williams was a doctor, and his poetry was informed by his contact with everyday people, so too Masters. He was a lawyer and a keen observationist. He writes directly and frankly, especially about male-female relations, which earned this book a bit of a scandalous reputation in its time. Of course, it is mild enough today that the book is assigned reading in junior highs, even in the South. I've read this book three times through, and often re-read individual favorites. And I have it in easy reach on my shelf because I plan to keep re-reading it. There is something about the people of Spoon River and their sentiments that keeps me coming back. As May Swenson says, in her introduction to this edition, Masters "bequeathed to us a world in microcosm." A world, in my opinion, worth exploring again and again.
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Summary: Spoon River Anthology - If You Read No Other Book...
Review: Make Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters "the" one book to read before you leave this earth! This is the book you set by your bedside and "read" before you start your day and again read before you go to bed! It's the "Master" and without a doubt one of the best literatures I've ever read - A True Classic! Read this book; send one to your loved ones and a few to those that need simple philosophy in their lives! All ages need the words of Edgar Lee Masters... but above all, learn from these poems. It's one of the few books that I don't fall to sleep too!
Rating:
Summary: Spoon River Anthology - If You Read No Other Book...
Review: Make Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters "the" one book to read before you leave this earth! This is the book you set by your bedside and "read" before you start your day and again read before you go to bed! It's the "Master" and without a doubt one of the best literatures I've ever read - A True Classic! Read this book; send one to your loved ones and a few to those that need simple philosophy in their lives! All ages need the words of Edgar Lee Masters... but above all, learn from these poems. It's one of the few books that I don't fall to sleep too!
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Summary: This is the version to read, to buy, to own!
Review: Okay, okay, we know it's a true classic of American Literature, but why should you buy the Annotated Edition? Well, annotations, for one thing. The added layers of understanding are well worth the extra $. Plus, it's a really nice trade paperback. It just looks classier than some newsprinty mass market.
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Summary: Like 200 spoons in a drawer
Review: Originally published in 1915 this anthology is a series of free verse monologues written from the perspective of the deceased inhabitants of Spoon River. Most of the monologues are from rather pathetic people who were either wronged by others or who wronged others. The book concludes with "The Spooniad" which gives something of a story summary of the events that you have been reading about from the perspective of the various characters.
My favourite part is comparing the monologues of the various parties involved in the disputes. This can be quite funny at times to see the irony of their lives from the perspective of death. The monologues are also quite philosophical at times and I conclude with
Griffy the Cooper
The cooper should know about tubs.
But I learned about life as well,
And you who loiter around these graves
Think you know life.
You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,
In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.
You cannot lift yourself to its rim
And see the outer world of things,
And at the same time see yourself.
You are submerged in the tub of yourself-
Taboos and rules and appearances,
Are the staves of your tub.
Break them and dispel the witchcraft
Of thinking your tub is life!
And that you know life!
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Summary: If this does not depress you nothing will
Review: Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson , Thornton Wilder and Edgar Lee Masters all find in small- town Middle America the proof of Thoreau's ' the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation'. However Masters version of this is a particularly difficult and depressing one, as the frame device involves each character telling his story from the graveyard. There is no ' they all lived happily after' or no ' happy ending ' here. The bitterness, pain , failure frustration of many of these lives makes the whole work extremely for me anyway difficult to get through. Nonetheless there is a lot one can learn about small town Midwest American life, about its conflicts and passions from this volume. The poetry however as poetry is not at the highest level, the level where the language itself means more to us than any one reading can give. This seems to me in a certain way more valuable as a social document than as Literature.
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Summary: A Reminder that history is people.
Review: 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.
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Summary: A Classic of American Literature
Review: Spoon River Anthology is one of the books that everybody who loves literature ought to read. Even though the Editorial Board of the Modern Library didn't include it in their top 100 list, it belongs there. Like Our Town which came later, Spoon River Anthology captures the small town perspective and like Winesburg, Ohio (which did make the Modern Library list) it evokes another time and place which contain the roots of many of us today. This book is very rewarding.
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Summary: Bad publication of a wonderful classic
Review: The electronic version of this book if jam packed with typo's. If you are seeking mistakes, this is the book for you.
The pagination of the original text is also missing, giving the impression that the heading for each poem is actually a signature. I realize this might save many pages from the book, but this is an ebook!
Nuvision Publications should hire a proof-reader.
Rating:
Summary: Here in Spoon River
Review: The wondrous folksinger, Claudia Schmidt composed a song with that line in it and since I read this back in college, her song spoke to me. The recent Richard Buckner CD (The Hill) was loaned by a friend who didn't know who Masters was nor had heard of SRA, and it too is outstanding. The town of Spoon River is indeed fictive, though there is a Spoon River Community College near Peoria. The characters were real enough, however, to be very angry at ELM for generations following publication. A college roomate descended from one such family (he's from Pekin) and the mere mention of Mr. Masters name evoked strong responses similar to how parts of my family (from GA) don't allow the name Sherman in conversation. That obviously means Edgar got it right. It is a fine book, on par with another fav, To Kill A Mockingbird, and it will become one for your permanent collection.
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