Spoon River Anthology is the best-known work by the American author Edgar Lee Masters. The book is a collection of 245 poems written in free verse. Free verse is a poetic style that does not include such traditional elements of poetry as regular meter or rhyme. Each poem in the Anthology is spoken by a former resident of the small Midwestern town of Spoon River. Each of the speakers is now dead and lying buried in the town cemetery. Each tells about his or her life and attempts to interpret, from the grave, the meaning of existence. The poems were first published serially in Reedy’s Mirror magazine in 1914 and 1915 and collected in book form in 1915.
Spoon River is a dreary town filled with narrow-minded residents. The speakers of the poems describe their failed hopes and ambitions. They reflect on their bitter and stunted lives, dominated by frustration, pettiness, and monotony. Many of the speakers are related, creating the histories of 19 town families. The poems contrast with the pious and optimistic epitaphs (memorial sayings) inscribed on the headstones of the graves in the cemetery. One of the best known poems is spoken by Petit, the village poet. Another poem is spoken by Anne Rutledge, a real-life woman whom United States President Abraham Lincoln supposedly loved.
Masters based fictional Spoon River on Lewistown and Petersburg, the small Illinois towns where he grew up. The book was inspired by the Greek Anthology, a collection of poems and epigrams (witty sayings) by ancient Greek writers. Masters wrote a less successful sequel, The New Spoon River (1924).
See also Masters, Edgar Lee .
