Spoon River Anthology

by Edgar Lee Masters

Overview

A landmark of 20th-century American literature: a series of over 200 compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dreams of their lives. Reprinted from the authoritative 1915 edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486112107
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	02/03/2012
Series:	Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	522 KB

About the Author

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868 in Garnett, Kansas. He achieved fame in 1915 with the publication of Spoon River Anthology. Though he never matched the success of Spoon River Anthology, Masters was a prolific writer of diverse works. He published several volumes of poems including The Great Valley (1916), Along the Illinois (1942), The Serpent in the Wilderness (1933), and Invisible Landscapes (1935). In the 1940s he was awarded the Poetry Society of America medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Edgar Lee Masters died in Melrose, Pennsylvania, in 1950 and is buried in Petersburg, Illinois.

Read an Excerpt

Spoon River Anthology

The Hill

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

 

One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in a jail, One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

 

Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

 

One died in shameful child-birth, One of a thwarted love, One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire, One after life in far-away London and Paris Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, And Major Walker who had talked With venerable men of the revolution?—All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

 

They brought them dead sons from the war, And daughters whom life had crushed, And their children fatherless, crying—All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.

 

Where is Old Fiddle: Jones Who played with life all his ninety years, Braving the sleet with bared breast, Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, Of what Abe Lincoln said One time at Springfield.

All new material in this edition copyright © 1996 by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Table of Contents

In Spoon River Anthology, the American poet Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950) created a series of compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dream of their lives. First published in book form in 1915, the Anthology was the crowning achievement of Masters' career as a poet, and a work that would become a landmark of 20th-century American literature.
In these pages, no less than 214 individual voices are heard—some in no more than a dozen moving lines. Alternately plaintive, anguished, enigmatic, angry, and contemptuous, the voices of Spoon River, although distinctively small-town Americans, evoke themes of love and hope, disappointment and despair that are universal in their resonance. This American classic is reprinted here from the authoritative 1915 edition.