Spoon River Anthology

1st edition (Macmillan & Co.)

Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses. The poems were originally published in the magazine Reedy's Mirror.

Content

The first poem serves as an introduction:

"The Hill"
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire;
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution?—
All, all are sleeping on the hill.
They brought them dead sons from the war,
And daughters whom life had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield.

Each following poem is an epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves. They speak about the sorts of things one might expect: some recite their histories and turning points, others make observations of life from the outside, and petty ones complain of the treatment of their graves, while few tell how they really died. Speaking without reason to lie or fear the consequences, they construct a picture of life in their town that is shorn of façades. The interplay of various villagers — e.g. a bright and successful man crediting his parents for all he's accomplished, and an old woman weeping because he is secretly her illegitimate child — forms a gripping, if not pretty, whole.

The subject of afterlife receives only the occasional brief mention, and even those seem to be contradictory.

The work features such characters as Tom Merritt, Amos Sibley, Carl Hamblin, Fiddler Jones and A.D. Blood. Many of the characters that make appearances in Spoon River Anthology were based on real people that Masters knew or heard of in the two towns in which he grew up, Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois. Most notable is Ann Rutledge, regarded in local legend to be Abraham Lincoln's early love interest though there is no actual proof of such a relationship. Rutledge's grave can still be found in a Petersburg cemetery, and a tour of graveyards in both towns reveals most of the surnames that Masters applied to his characters.

Other local legends assert that Masters' fictional portrayal of local residents, often in unflattering light, created a lot of embarrassment and aggravation in his hometown. This is offered as an explanation for why he chose not to settle down in Lewistown or Petersburg.

Spoon River Anthology is often used in second year characterization work in the Meisner technique of actor training.

Adaptations

• In 1943, the book was published in Italy (translated by Fernanda Pivano)
• In 1956, the German composer Wolfgang Jacobi set a selection of four poems as a song cycle for baritone and accordion entitled "Die Toten von Spoon River".
• On June 2, 1957, the CBS Radio Network broadcast a radio adaptation of Spoon River Anthology, "Epitaphs", as part of its CBS Radio Workshop series. The adaptation was directed and narrated by William Conrad, with a cast including Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, Parley Baer, Richard Crenna, John Dehner and John McIntire.
• In 1963, Charles Aidman adapted Spoon River Anthology into a theater production that is still widely performed today.
• The 1971, Fabrizio De André album Non al denaro non all'amore né al cielo was inspired by Spoon River Anthology.
• In 1985, the British Composer Andrew Downes set a selection of five poems as a song cycle entitled "Songs from Spoon River."
• In 1987, the Spanish writer Jon Juaristi wrote a poem entitled Spoon River, Euskadi (included in his book Suma de varia intención) to denounce the crimes of the Basque terrorist group ETA.
• In 1993, the American composer Mark Schultz set a selection of ten poems, in pairs, as a work for two horns (who also narrate) and piano entitled "Voices from Spoon River."
• In 2000, alt-country singer Richard Buckner adapted parts of the Spoon River Anthology for his album The Hill.
• in 2005, American composer Karl W. Schindler wrote a multimedia cantata entitled Ghost Voices: Songs From a Cemetery, adapting many of the poems from Spoon River Anthology into the 32-minute work.
• in 2005, the Utah State University's Creative Learning Environment Lab created an serious game entitled Voices of Spoon River, in which the player explores an environment and solved puzzles based on the Spoon River Anthology .
• In 2006, the American photographer William Willinghton published the book Spoon River, ciao (Dreams Creek, 2006) with pictures of real landscapes described by Edgar Lee Masters (as Spoon River and the little cemetery on the hill where "all, all, are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill"). William Willinghton's images are accompanied by texts by Italian writer and translator Fernanda Pivano.
• Songwriter Michael Peter Smith's song "Spoon River" is loosely based on Spoon River Anthology.
• In 2009 Soprano and filmmaker Paula Downes made five films to accompany Andrew Downes' song cycle "Songs from Spoon River." They can be viewed on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SpoonRiver100
• Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Society performed an adaptation with music from The Staircase Band in early 2009. Peter Piercy, Jazz Jagger, Nina Ellis, Arthur Asseraf, Nausika El Mecky and Ju Shardlow dramatised seven poems from the anthology. The project is to be revived in 2011 in Hackney, London.
• In 2010, playwright Tom Andolora wrote an adaptation (with music of the period) titled "The Spoon River Project". It was written to be performed outdoors in a cemetery at night. It had its NYC premiere at the historic Green-Wood Cemetery June 2011.
• In September 2010 the Ho Orchestra (featuring members of Dutch band The Nits, Finnish band Värttinä and Swiss musician Simon Ho's band) performed several concerts in Switzerland with songs based on the poems. A CD called "Spoon River A Lakeside Concert" was released in June 2011.

External links

• Spoon River Anthology online with cross-references and comments
• Spoon River Anthology at Bartleby.com
• Spoon River Anthology at Project Gutenberg
• Spoon River Anthology in 6"×9" PDF at the Pennsylvania State University Electronic Classics Site
• Ho Orchestra - Spoon River A Lakeside Concert
• Hartley, Lois Teal, Spoon River Revisted, 1963

Adaptation authors

• William Willinghton — official William Willinghton website
• Fernanda Pivano
• Fabrizio De André
• Karl W. Schindler
• Tom Andolora