SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY by Edgar Lee Masters (306 pages)

This time I’m not including a photo of the book cover because I don’t see the version I read listed on the B&N website. It appears that this book has had several revisions since it was first published in 1915. There are over 200 poems each representing a different person’s epitaph from the fictional mid west town of Spoon River. You’ll meet the doctor, lawyer, banker, preacher, and more. You’ll read about the political landscape of the time period – the ward, the President, etc. You’ll see how the lives of those living in a small town are so intertwined. In the back of the book I read you’ll also find the Spooniad and an Epilogue which have evidently been left out of other editions.

The contents section has an alphabetical listing of all of the people instead of a chronological listing according to where they’re found in the book. I found this quite helpful when wanting to go back and read about someone when their name came up later in the book.

I like how the author’s poems flowed from one person to the next telling a story, but again, I often found myself going backwards in the book when I recognized a name so I could remember what had previously been written about them.

This book didn’t keep my attention like the Francine Rivers series I recently read, but I am glad I read it since it’s reported as being a great work of genuine American poetry – listed in one place as “one of the most original pieces of imaginative literature” ever written. At least I will now recognize the name of the author, Edgar Lee Masters, and I might even pick up another one of his books to see what else he has written. And, if the opera by this same title ever comes to town I suppose I might even go to the performance!