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The Spoon River Anthology is a classic collection of poems by Edgar
Lee Masters, with verses dedicated and named for members of a
fictional small American town. Edgar Masters intention when he
composed these verses was to demystify the culture of small town
America. Over the decades prior to this anthology's publication in
1915, rural and urban cultures in the USA had diverged
considerably: to many city-dwellers, how life in the country
actually proceeded was simply unknown. Originally serialized in a
magazine named Reedy's Mirror, each of the poems give the reader
insight into the lives, events, and culture of a typical small
country town. Each is titled after a specific character, and
contains their thoughts and concerns at a given time. This acts to
build a narrative around the small town, which is proven to be
colorful and emotionally distinct place, with several characters
coping with grief and loss.
Here are Masters's dramatic monologues written in free verse about
a fictional Midwestern town called Spoon River. The dead, "sleeping
on the hill" in their village cemetery, awaken to tell the truth
about their lives, toppling the myth of the moral superiority of
small-town life.
A CLASSIC IN AMERICAN POETRY... When Spoon River Anthology was
published in 1915 it garnered immediate national attention for its
truth and its shocking transgression of societal mores. A
collection of poems from the graveyard of a rural Illinois town,
Spoon River Anthology poignantly captures the politics, love,
betrayals, alliances, hopes, and failures of this small American
town. Here is the respected doctor, jailed for swindling; here is
the chaste wife, rapt with desire; here is the pastor, angry and
resentful; here is the quiet man, filled with unrequited love and
devotion. Beneath the midwestern values of honesty, community,
family, hard work, and chastity, Spoon River Anthology reveals the
disillusionment and corruption in modern life. With the publication
of Spoon River Anthology Masters exploded the powerful myth that
small-town America was a social utopia. Here for the first time was
a community that people recognized in its wholeness and complexity.
Comprised of distinctly modern poems that collectively read as a
novel, Spoon River Anthology is the story of a quiet midwestern
town whose truths and contradictions are celebrated by its dead.
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