- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Touchstone (Mar 30 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743255070
- ISBN-13: 978-0743255073
- Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 13.7 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #740,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From School Library Journal
YA-- A richly annotated edition resuscitates a fading American classic. Because Hallivas's pithy introduction adds both perspective and gossipy detail, YAs will enjoy learning about the individual struggles of the 244 characters who speak from the cemetery on "the hill." Secondary teachers will find this a useful tool for preparing character sketches, thanks to the lively, specific annotations naming names: who rejected whom; who challenged whom, both physically and politically--and it is all expertly researched. The microcosm of Spoon River comes alive with its central conflicts of agrarian traditionist v. temperance and abolitionist activism. From the grave, the hard-drinking, roughly hewn frontiersmen challenge the do-good social reformers, reenacting the struggle the 19th-century midwestern push kindled: would any government law prohibiting drinking or slavery impress these strong individual-rights townspeople? They offer their own answers as Masters intended, but they offer the responses against a tapestry of detail the editor provides. Hallivas's cogent essay traces the philosophical influences that marked Masters's works: Spinoza, Goethe, and especially Whitman. The inclusion of several photographs of the characters who speak adds important visual detail.
- Margaret Nolan, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Margaret Nolan, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of 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
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read, Consider and Enjoy!,
By
This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Audio CD)
I had read "Spoon River Anthology" in high school many years ago and decided to revisit it to refresh the fading memory. I was not disappointed. This work by Edgar Lee Masters consists of reflections, accusations, confessions and general commentaries from the graves of late citizens of Spoon River. The actual river, and mythical setting of the town, is in Central Illinois' Lincoln Country. These snippets provide humor, wisdom, insight and a sense that human nature has not changed much over the years. Read, consider and enjoy!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great teaching tool,
By A Customer
This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Paperback)
I use this book in my English 8 classrooms to discuss character sketches and reading and understanding poetry. The students love that it's "kinda" dark and morbid. I like it because the students can focus on one person on "the hill" and not be worried with numerous characters and settings. I've used it in both 8th and 10th grade and the writing that comes from the reading of these poems is amazing.
5.0 out of 5 stars
If the dead could talk,
By A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spoon River Anthology (Paperback)
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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