Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)

Some of the writing, albeit morbid, is downright delicious. Best taken in small doses, however. He beats the theme like a dead horse. I pride myself on a high tolerance for grief and morbidity, and I could only make it halfway through. Not surprising that James Franco made a contest of adapting it into a short film. There are about eight minutes' worth of gripping, compelling, poetry in this book. Save the rest for when you're feeling Poe-ish, or have just gone through a break-up and want to show more read about a caste of characters who are all worse off than you. show less

Some of the writing, albeit morbid, is downright delicious. Best taken in small doses, however. He beats the theme like a dead horse. I pride myself on a high tolerance for grief and morbidity, and I could only make it halfway through. Not surprising that James Franco made a contest of adapting it into a short film. There are about eight minutes' worth of gripping, compelling, poetry in this book. Save the rest for when you're feeling Poe-ish, or have just gone through a break-up and want to show more read about a caste of characters who are all worse off than you. show less

I stumbled upon this after reading How to Read a Book. This free verse poetical book is more than 100 years old and includes epitaphs from people from the fictional town of Spoon River. It’s darker than you would expect, and I loved it. It reminded me of Winesburg, Ohio. Ordinary life is heartbreaking and this book captures that perfectly.

Spoon River Anthology is more than the sum of its parts. The dead comment and complain about their neighbors; the graveyard is a community of gossipy cross-references. The best poems play off other poems: one set of poems includes a young woman, her father, her doctor, the doctor's wife, and (finally) the woman's rapist -- and it's only after reading all of these poems that the reader realizes the oblique subject (a botched abortion) that all the speakers have skirted around.

Figuring out the show more connections between the various inhabitants of Spoon River is fun, but there are a lot of poems and the whole thing eventually becomes numbing. Masters doesn't help matters by including two long poetic codas at the end of the Anthology to reiterate his none-too-subtle points. show less