Publisher's Synopsis
Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short poems in free verse that collectively narrate the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the true Spoon River that ran near the Masters' hometown. Lewistown, Illinois. The goal of the poems is to demystify the American life of rural and small towns. The collection includes 212 separate characters, in total with 244 accounts of their lives, losses and death. Many of the poems contain cross references that create a shameless tapestry of the community. The poems were originally published in 1914 in the literary magazine Reedy's Mirror in St. Louis, Missouri., Under the pseudonym Webster Ford. Each following poem is an autobiographical epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves.Characters include Tom Merritt, Amos Sibley, Carl Hamblin, Fiddler Jones, and AD Blood. They talk about the kinds of things one might expect: some recite their stories and turning points, others make observations of life from the outside, and little ones complain about the treatment of their graves, while few tell how they really died. The theme of life after death receives only a brief occasional mention.
