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Title: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, John Hollander ISBN: 0-451-52530-2 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: January, 1992 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.92 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Voices of Humanity
Comment: I was turned on to this book after hearing the latest Richard Buckner release "The Hill", in which the musician uses the Spoon River Anthology as the basis for his conceptual music. After listening to this wonderful disc, I was compelled to read the actual work by Edgar Lee Masters. What I found was a book that was written in 1915, but that brings to life the voices of humanity louder than anything I've read in recent years. This book is more poetry than literature, but the stories of the residents of Spoon River that are collected within the pages are stories that are not soon forgotten.
This book has moved me more than anything else I've read in recent years, and I highly recommend that othes read this outstanding work of art.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent reading! Rates #1 in "Spoon River Illinois"
Comment: Ilive in Spoon River (Lewistown Illinois) Masters came from here, and he covered human nature at its worst and best after he left here. The book has been at the top of students and in theatres since it was published' I am the historian here in Lewistown Ill. and the characters are as alive today as they were then! It is 'must' reading for all literature lovers, American or English styles. Masters left here in 1894,went to Chicago and New York City and left his mark that can never be erased from the annals of literature. He graduated here from Lewistown High school in 1886, and practised law here. However "Spoon River Anthology" lives on here in the 'valley of the 'unmythical' Spoon River! The book is real, the town is real, and the River is real! In 1925 Masters told in an article review on his "Genesis of Spoon River"....."If there was ever a town called Spoon River" IT IS Lewistown, Illinois!" Read the book, then visit the town in Central Illinois during the autumn Spoon River Scenic Drive Festival Days! Come See the real Spoon River, and see a part of what Masters saw! Human Nature - and nature itself!
Rating: 5
Summary: If the dead could talk
Comment: Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Anthology" is a poem in long form comprising over two hundred free-verse sketches, each representing and narrated by a deceased resident of a fictional town located on the Spoon River in western Illinois. The dead talk not so much about their town as they do about themselves and the pivotal events that either transformed their lives or caused their deaths. Like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," the book exposes the depression, restlessness, and corruption that lurk behind the facade of small-town middle American sanctity with an almost constant focus on death that makes it even more grim. If you're looking for something cheerful to read, you might want to pass on this.
"Spoon River Anthology" has perhaps the highest character-to-page ratio of any work in literature. Many of the narratives are interrelated in the sense that different people involved in a particular situation present their respective arguments which may be defensive apologies or rationalizations or vindictive taunts. The names of the characters are often indicative of their personalities; appellations like Isaiah Beethoven, Voltaire Johnson, and Percy Bysshe Shelley show that Spoon River is hardly a haven for subtlety.
The most commonly mentioned character is the wealthy Thomas Rhodes, the failure of whose bank had caused financial ruin to many of the town's residents, although we learn later that the culpability rests with his son Ralph's bad loans and speculations. George Reece, the innocent cashier, took the rap and was sent to prison; his wife in her narrative advises the reader of her epitaph to "memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty." She did so herself, taking a line from Alexander Pope, which enabled her to raise her children "clean and strong" in the face of hardship.
In Spoon River, lives of quiet desperation result in a cemetery of yapping corpses, lamenting wasted youth and lost chances. Margaret Fuller Slack tells us that she aspired to be a novelist "as great as George Eliot" but marriage and motherhood cost her all of her time; her death from lockjaw is "ironical" because presumably she had so much to say. Searcy Foote confesses remorselessly that he murdered his invalid aunt for money and personal freedom. Zilpha Marsh, the ouija-board reader, was regarded as a fool when she would report to the townspeople that she had made contact with the spirit of a notorious figure from the past; the present tense of her narrative suggests that she is unaware that now she, too, is merely in the past.
Every single narrative in this fantastic collection is worthy of commentary; to mention just a few risks a skewed impression of the whole because the "Anthology" really must be read in its entirety to grasp its context. However, there is one more feature which must be noted: The "Anthology" ends with a fragment of an epic poem by Jonathan Swift Somers, one of the deceased. Apparently it is a parody of the Iliad, and naturally it is called the Spooniad, drawing a parallel between the fall of Troy and that of Rhodes's bank. Somers did not live to complete this ambitious project, which is just as well since in Spoon River death affords a distinction few living poets can hope to attain.
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Title: Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg ISBN: 0486280578 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 20 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson ISBN: 055321439X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: What Every College Student Should Know: How to Find the Best Teachers and Learn the Most from Them by Ernie Lepore, Sarah-Jane Leslie ISBN: 0813530660 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Sanford Meisner on Acting by Dennis Longwell, Sydney Pollack, Sanford Meisner ISBN: 0394750594 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 July, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title:The Hill ASIN: B00004Y6U1 Publisher: Overcoat Recordings Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.98 |
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