Spoon River Anthology

I finished listening to the Libri Vox audio book of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters today. This is a collection of poems each the "true" epitaph of an inhabitant of a graveyard in the town of Spoon River, Indiana. It was written around the turn of the last century. There is no town of Spoon River, but there is a river of that name, and many of the names appearing in the book were those of residents of that region. I expected a meditation on small town life in America, like a cross between "Our Town" and "Main Street". Its not either of those, though I don't know as I understand much of what I heard. It was not at all sentimental. To me it did not have a very specific sense of place. Masters did not seem interested in the people in there relation to the place. Some of the poems were interesting character sketches. Some were truely shocking. Some poems had a very modern feeling, and I would find myself wondering, "did people really think like that back then."

J