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Challenges the reader to guess and spell the answers to twenty-five riddles about everyday objects. Includes pictures of the objects to color. ... Read more

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Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Thomson Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Poetry for Students." ... Read more

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Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Gale--and "Poetry for Students." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a classic
A classic.
I like the interesting structure that these are all dead people, writing these poems to the living.
... Read more

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A series of poetic monologues by 244 former inhabitants (real and imagined) of Spoon River, Ill.-- all are dead and from their graves speak their epitaphs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (41)

Classic
A book ahead of its time,
Spoon River Anthology
captures over 220 epitaphs
written as poems..
Stories told about their lives..
Poetry about the people
of the Prairie,frontier America,
failure, the breakdown
of the American dream,
Spoon Rover Anthology
captures America around the turn of
the 20th Century & before the first World War,
this is a book of poetry
as much as also American history,
Edgar Lee Masters did his
thing with
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY..

Spoon River Anthology
THE SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

If anyone has ever visited a cemetery overlooking a small town, there is a mystical milieu which permeates the place.When a gentle wind blows and the leaves flutter, one can almost sense a faint hint of the collected wisdom entombed there.This collected, faded voice is just barely audible to the listening ear.

For the denizens of the town cemetery, the sunrises and sunsets; the four seasons and life below just roll into days, months and years.Changes take shape and before you know, another generation has passed into the stream of time.


Each marked or unmarked grave has a story to tell.Their story is unique regardless of the length of the life which each person had before being laid to rest in the cemetery.

Edgar Lee Masters takes these faded voices and tell their gripping tales of joy and woe.The different layers of society from the rich to the poor; the righteous to the unrighteous; the joyful to the sad are all here expressing their final sentiments before they begin their sleep without dreams on the hill by the river.Their fading voices forever lost in the silence of the wingless void.

The Spoon River is a metaphor for the river of life.Life is like an old riverboat that drifts along the ebbs of the winding river.For on this riverboat you have an assortment of characters-good and bad, but mostly mediocre lives toiling to survive a mundane existence.

Masters takes these faded voices by he river and bring them to the ears of the living.Some of these voices are quiet like a whisper while others are like jubilee trumpets.

Each voice is important because each voice represents a man or woman who shared a place in this cosmos called Spoon River. Like the distant light of stars which greet us each cloudless night, these voices stir the winds about us until we are enveloped by them like a river fog which drifts about us.These disembodied thoughts are the last vapors ofthe lives touched by the elements of nature and the cruel hand of neighbor and family.

For there can be no greater tragedy for a life, then for it to be forgotten by those individuals touched by it.Masters demands that these faded entities should have their obelisk of immortality.Their words will be still read and pondered long after the human frames of dust are mingled with the soils of time.

Spoon River is not a myth.It is a reality which faces every human soul.For one day each of us regardless of our standing in our own society will be entombed in the cemetery on the edge of town.

What will we have to say from our final resting place?Perhaps, words like these:

Chase Henry: In life I was the town drunkard
Judge Somers: I lie here unmarked, forgotten
Minerva Jones: I thirsted for love! I hungered so for life.
Dorcas Gustine: But silence poisons the soul
Margaret Fuller Slack: Sex is the curse of life!
Robert Davidson: Remember the acorn. It does not devour other acorns.
Editor Whedon: And abortions are hidden.
Elizabeth Childers: Death is better than Life!

Before you read the book, visit your local cemetery and walk among the graves and read those slabs of stone with bits of information about the ones beneath.Then read the book.

The story of America by Americans of all kinds
A classic of American literature, it tells the story of the America I grew up in, the one that still exists and thrives.

Spoon River Anthology(signet classics)
This is incredile writing, Masters ability to give his characters a voice that reachs ones heart and mind simply amazing. Ernest Hyde, is an excellent example of this as well as Amanda Barker,Yee Bow and many others. These are the names of some the voices that Masters sets free. There dry innocent voices are oddly humorous and this is what i find the most refreshing.This is free verse at its finest.

Spoon River flows through humanity
Masters' Spoon River Anthology is as poignant today as when it was written. Part glimpse of history, part poetic essay on the eternal frailties of the human animal, the epitaphs are riveting from first to last. Read it. Then get a spoken word recording. Then read it again. You'll find these characters live on. ... Read more

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12 pages ... Read more