A CLASSIC IN AMERICAN POETRY... When Spoon River Anthology was published in 1915 it garnered immediate national attention for its truth and its shocking transgression of societal mores. 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. 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. Beneath the midwestern values of honesty, community, family, hard work, and chastity, Spoon River Anthology reveals the disillusionment and corruption in modern life. With the publication of Spoon River Anthology Masters exploded the powerful myth that small-town America was a social utopia. Here for the first time was a community that people recognized in its wholeness and complexity. 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.

アメリカ中西部の田舎町「スプーンリバー」。人びとが「丘」と呼ぶ、この町の共同墓地から244の墓碑銘が語りかける、人生のうらみつらみ、愛の喪失、政治的離反、セックスにがんじがらめの人間模様。1915年、アメリカでベストセラーとなって以来、今日まで読み継がれているマスターズの代表作。