Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?. Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife-Īll, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill. The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, Manufactured in the United States of America Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC Read moreĪll rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.įirst Start Publishing eBook edition October 2012 Sibley, pastor's wife and free spirit Elsa Wertman, German immigrant and mother of a successful politician who has no idea he is her son. Many of the poems are forgettable, but some are haunting: Mickey M'Grew, who died cleaning the town water tank Conrad Siever, buried under one of his apple trees Mrs.

While the Spoon River Anthology now seems relatively tame, it's still enjoyable, and the trick of offering one story from a handful of radically divergent points of view still works.

The structure has been imitated in other works - a prose example is the book 253, by Geoff Ryman, with each chapter about a different passenger on an ill-fated subway train. Since then, of course, the themes have become commonplace, and been explored with greater nuance and explicitness elsewhere. Some of the deceased admit to having committed murder or adultery others offer sardonic reflections - all is vanity and chasing the wind. I can appreciate why, at the time of its publication in 1915, the book was seen as creative in its structure - lots of short poems, each in the voice or a different deceased former resident of the town of Spoon River, Illinois - and bracingly blunt in its substance.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters