Spoon River Anthology

By Edgar Lee Masters, McMillan and Co., 1915, 112 pages
Reviewed by Frank McGloin, Oct. 10, 2020

My review is about my favorite form of literature: poetry. Before you run for the hills or lock all your windows and doors, please read on a bit.

In 1915 Edgar Lee Masters put together "Spoon River Anthology," which instantly became a wild success in America and all over the world. That's right, all over the globe. His book of poetry was sensational in its style and content.

Growing up in small-town middle-America, he detested the false image of such places as bastions of model morals and traditional values. He believed the opposite was true.

A very successful lawyer who was in practice with Clarence Darrow in the early 1900s, Masters drifted away from law and started hanging out with Carl Sandberg, among other notable literary figures in Chicago, a place he much preferred to his hypocritical past home.

Twenty-three years before Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-Prize-winning “Our Town,” Masters used people of every stripe and status to tear down the mythical Spoon River. From their graves. The brief, incisive pronouncements of dead people cut to the bone. In a poetic prose style, Masters draws the reader in and captivates with stunning stories from beyond.

If you never read another poetry book, you will treasure this one. The anthology – the word is derived from the Greek meaning "floral display" – will get you hooked on poetry, a form of literature that was so very popular until after World War II. Enjoy a 1915 book that is actually sold in the small poetry section of Barnes & Noble. Of course, that could be bad or good.

Thanks for reading to the end.