Spoon River Anthology
1915
The dead of Spoon River finally tell the truth. In this revolutionary 1915 collection, Edgar Lee Masters gave voice to 212 souls buried in a fictional Midwestern town, each offering an epitaph that shatters the pastoral myth of American small-town life. These are not the gentle remembrances of beloved neighbors. They are confessions of affair and ambition, of dreams abandoned and cruelties hidden, of marriages built on lies and suicides no one acknowledged. A doctor admits he killed his patients. A minister reveals his atheism. A woman confesses to murdering her husband. The hill where they lie silent has finally stopped the pretense. What makes this collection extraordinary is how the poems interconnect. Characters reference each other. The banker appears in the farmer's poem. The schoolteacher surfaces in the lawyer's confession. Readers must piece together narratives from fragments, building a community portrait from the testimony of the departed. Written in plain-spoken free verse, Spoon River remains a devastating act of literary exposure, proof that every small town holds a cemetery full of unspoken stories.
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“To this generation I would say:Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,But life without meaning is the tortureOf restlessness and vague desire--It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“The tongue may be an unruly member--But silence poisons the soul.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“In time you shall see Fate approach youIn the shape of your own image in the mirror.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“And I never started to plow in my lifeThat some one did not stop in the roadAnd take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle”
— Edgar Lee Masters
“the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“Act well your part,there all the honor lies.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“I tramped through the countryTo get the feelingThat I was not a separate thing from the earth.I used to lose myselfBy lying with eyes half-open in the woods.Sometimes I talked with animals…””
— Edgar Lee Masters
“This is life's sorrow:That one can be happy only where two are;And that our hearts are drawn to starsWhich want us not.””
— Edgar Lee Masters
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Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology. Lex, lex-books.com/book/spoon-river-anthology-763cf344-3c67-4e15-99cc-39e964373b13.Masters, E. L. (1915). Spoon River Anthology. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/spoon-river-anthology-763cf344-3c67-4e15-99cc-39e964373b13Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/spoon-river-anthology-763cf344-3c67-4e15-99cc-39e964373b13.
