Book Review: Spoon River Anthology

In Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, the voices of ordinary people reach out to us in poetry.

In over 200 poems, the deceased residents of the fictional town of Spoon River speak to the readers about the truth behind the facades of their lives, resulting in a series of interconnected stories with a kind of multiple-perspective Rashamon feel. The poems are their epitaphs, the summation statements broadcast to the rest of the world. Secret affairs, business and personal failures, frustrations, political in-fighting, and confessions, all is revealed.

Relating to the anonymous reader what they couldn't or wouldn't while alive, the characters' narratives become confessions of lives less than perfect, as if by doing so they can absolve themselves--or maybe, simply, accept themselves. And as readers, we become involved in their stories, drawn in by these cries to be heard.

Masters' verse is free, loose, his ear close to the ground to catch the rhythms of natural, realistic speech, yet shading each poem with the character's unique outlook. The tragic poetess Minerva Jones' simple yet elegant voice contrasts with the bluster of her father; the acerbic wit of Editor Whedon contrasts with the Romantic, garrulous tone of Webster Ford.

What is it about confessional stories and memoirs that we like so much? Is it to confirm our secret sense of superiority? Is it to feel relieved that we not the only ones? Or is a curious mix of both? While we may feel compassion for one or more of the characters, we may also breath a quiet sigh of relief that our lives aren't so messy. And which characters we sympathize with the most may also be revealing of our own inner life.

In as large a collection as this, the quality of the invidividual poems varies. Monotony crops up as well as the poet's tendency to insert his views into the characters' confessions, (although the intruding narrator was still a common literary convention at the time). However, these tense energies of confession and gossip contained in free verse and short stanzas make Spoon River Anthology a quick, absorbing, enjoyable, and just a wee bit uncomfortable read.

Above all, the poems will make the reader wonder...what will be my epitaph? What will I say about my life?