Spoon River Anthology

I'm rereading this after many years.

I first read this in junior high school, and remember it impressing me mightily then.

Now, the first thing that crosses me mind is how strong must be the urge for parody or satire for writers who read this, because the work is so damn sincere.

I mean, there's a sense of humor and a strong wit, but it's still all ultimately in service of certain core values which some people are simply not going to buy into.

And yet the work is still there on the shelves in every major bookstore, in its umpteenth edition.

I suppose some people even consider it a novel in poetry. I could see how one could make that argument.

It's a plain sort of truth-telling to which Masters aspires. He seems to want every life to be tallied and totalled in words clean and honest as just-sawn boards. I suppose that can grate on many readers today.

"Surely you don't expect us to believe you're going to sum up each life with twenty lines of poetry, with ten lines of poetry, with FIVE lines of poetry?!" these readers ask in astonishment.

And I suppose he would have answered, "Sure do."

God, could you imagine what a contemporary version of Spoon River Anthology would sound like? Scary stuff.

I like to imagine a character who died after getting too many body piercings; maybe he or she has a reaction to the prescribed antibiotics. I could hear old Edgar intoning the sententia at the end: "They buried me without my nose ring."

Okay, that's awful.

I should be reading this work with more credulity. He meant what he wrote dammit!

The names alone are admittedly enough to induce titters. He should have just foregone that attempt to get the symbolism into the name. That is an annoying characteristic. Dickens can get away with it. But Masters can't really.

Here are a few and you make up your own minds...


     Alexander Throckmorton

In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision--
Genius is wisdom and youth.


(Oh yeah, tell it to Monet, Masters! Again with the ironic names. We are to think Alexander the Great, but coupled with "Throckmorton" which leads to a spoonerism which invokes "Mock Thor" or "Mock Thornton." Is this a jibe at Thornton Wilder?)


     Rev. Abner Peet


I had no objection at all
To selling my household effects at auction
On the village square.
It gave my beloved flock the chance
To get something which had belonged to me
For a memorial.
But that trunk which was struck off
To Burchard, the grog-keeper!
Did you know it contained the manuscripts
Of a lifetime of sermons?
And he burned them as waste paper.


(Note again the oh-so-ironic name, a homophone for "peat." He's just going to rot away. And I'm sure Masters was so proud of how he got the acidic verbal irony in here where it's quite clear the reverend chafed at the indignity of the auction. Did people even call publicans "grog-keepers" in that period? It seems unlikely, and I'm guessing it's Master's attempt at color. But it strikes a sour note. Surely a minister could have come up with a better, more Biblical insult there.)


     Franklin Jones

If I could have lived another year
I could have finished my flying machine.
And become rich and famous.
Hence it is fitting the workman
Who tried to chisel a dove for me
Made it look more like a chicken.
For what is it all but being hatched,
And running about the yard,
To the day of the block?
Save that a man has an angel's brain,
And sees the ax from the first!


Okay, this one almost moves into Jack Handy territory. The pathos reads as bathos for me. There is such a thing as "too sincere." Here it is. And note he couldn't resist the irony with the name again, "Franklin" for a successful inventor (as opposed to this failed one) and "Jones" to point out how common he really is. Aspiration means nothing. Achievement and vision are everything. There: the poem can be completely paraphrased. If your poem can be paraphrased that easily, you wrote a sucky poem.

There are much better poems in here. Some I actually like.

I think it's the large scope of the work which leads to a sense of repetition in the similarly dreary fates of the townspeople which makes the Anthology start to grate.

And it's probably the fact that Masters is such a straight-shooter with morality.

Although, to be fair, there are some perceptive poems in here where he shows he knows how shifty that ground really is.

I'm reading it in short installments. I'll try to post some stronger pieces later.