![]() ![]() Comprised of distinctly modern poems that collectively read as a novel, Spoon River Anthology is the story of a quiet midwestern town whose truths and contradictions are celebrated by its dead. ![]() Here for the first time was a community that people recognized in its wholeness and complexity. ![]() With the publication of Spoon River Anthology Masters exploded the powerful myth that small-town America was a social utopia. Beneath the midwestern values of honesty, community, family, hard work, and chastity, Spoon River Anthology reveals the disillusionment and corruption in modern life. Here is the respected doctor, jailed for swindling here is the chaste wife, rapt with desire here is the pastor, angry and resentful here is the quiet man, filled with unrequited love and devotion. A collection of poems from the graveyard of a rural Illinois town, Spoon River Anthology poignantly captures the politics, love, betrayals, alliances, hopes, and failures of this small American town. In her right hand she held a scale Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. When Spoon River Anthology was published in 1915 it garnered immediate national attention for its truth and its shocking transgression of societal mores. She was brandishing the sword, Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. ![]()
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