Spoon River Anthology - Softcover

Masters, Edgar Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684838257 ISBN 13: 9780684838250

Publisher: Touchstone Books, 1997

Synopsis

One of the most striking and original achievements in American poetry is now available in a remarkable edition that comprehends the poet and his book in an entirely new way. This edition of Spoon River Anthology probes the social background of the smalltown world that Edgar Lee Masters loved and hated--and finally transmuted into powerful literary art. Extensive annotations identify the people whose lives inspired the 243 poetic accounts of frustration, violence, struggle, and triumph that once shocked American readers. The most extraordinary feature of this edition is the extensive introduction that provides the key to this misunderstood American classic. The book's relationship to Whitman is clearly established, and the important influences of Browning, Goethe, Spinoza, and others are revealed for the first time. John Hallwas's approach combines cultural, biographical, philosophical, psychoanalytic, mythic, and symbolic insights--and concludes with a stunning reassessment of "Our New Poet." The annotated Spoon River Anthology supersedes 75 years of largely misdirected critical commentary. It will send a new generation of readers back to this surprisingly complex book that probes so deeply into the American consciousness--and will send Masters back into our national anthologies.

About this title

Review

"Definitive... Hallwas' reading of 'Spoon River' is undoubtedly the best and the one the poet intended. The Midwest is seens as the New World Eden assaulted by the forces of modernization." -- Chicago Tribune. "Massively annotated... provides a wealth of information." -- The New Republic

From the Author

A funeral is often the starting point of a novel or film, where the black-clothed mourners, the tolling bell, the minister’s valediction, all set the scene for revelations to come. Edgar Lee Masters takes this an imaginative step further. What a brilliant story-telling device is his method of letting the dead speak for themselves and in doing so create the portrait of a community. It is one any novelist burdened with the minutiae of narrative, the getting characters from A to B and year to year, might envy. There is material for many novels in the 214 free-verse monologues, the tiny autobiographies, which form the text. To take as a model Mackail’s ‘Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology’ was an inspiration; as Martin Seymour-Smith has said, the work "acted as the catalyst required to manufacture the acid of his genius, compounded of an innate bitterness, a passion for the truth, and a rare sympathy for human beings."

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684838257
• ISBN 13: 9780684838250
• Binding: Paperback