A review by aneides
Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

3.0

I loved the concept, and parts of it were great. People's final statements about their lives often revealed all sides of a town's scandals and that was kind of cool. It might be fun to map out the people who mention each other in sort of a visual way, to see the connections and try to draw out a history that way, and I am sure it has been done in countless lit classes. However, I think this book was far too long, and the more high-falutin poems (including the two at the end, the Spooniad and I think the epilogue) were difficult to pay attention to. I read a lot of them without understanding or caring about the metaphors or references to history or various texts. Perhaps someday I'll reread. It might be better the second time.