Spoon River Anthology (Part 2) by Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology is a series of poetic stories about the lives of ordinary people as told by their ghosts. There's love and hate, betrayal and loyalty, comedy and tragedy. The characters get to tell their versions of murder, rape, revenge, accidents, and all the seedy sides of life as well as acts of heroism and lofty rhetoric meant to inspire. 

Spoon River Anthology was beloved from the moment it was published --except for the people on whom the poems were based.  Ezra Pound said, "At last! At last America has discovered a poet." Carl Sandburg was equally impressed: "Once in a while a man comes along who writes a book that has his own heart-beats in it. The people whose faces look out from the pages of the book are the people of life itself, each trait of them as plain or as mysterious as in the old home valley where the writer came from. Such a writer and book are realized here." But the townsfolk on whom Masters based the poems banned the book. Even Masters' mother voted to ban it.

Read the poems highlighted in today's podcast and all the poems in the anthology  at 
​https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1280

Today's readers are:
Dr. Siegfried Iseman--Bruno Vannieu
Fiddler Jones--Donald Guadagni
Dora Williams--Johanna Collier
Mrs. Williams--Ellen Fryer
Wendell P. Blood--Michael Rhys
Russian Sonia--Katherine Quevedo
Pauline Barrett--Luisa Piemontese
Mrs. Charles Bliss--Marian Hara
Rev. Lemuel Wiley--Timothy Gould
Elsa Wortman--Janice Ryan
Amos Sibley--Timothy Gould
Mrs. Sibley--Marian Hara
Amelia Garrick--Sarah Greaves
John Hancock Otis--Charles Kowalski
Anthony Findlay--Timothy Gould
Alexander Throckmorton--Charles Kowalski
Jonathan Swift Somers--Renata Pavrey
Eugene Carman--Andi Brooks
Roscoe Purkapile--Linda Gould
Mrs. Purkapile--Vicky Muehlheisen
Mrs. Kessler--Enne Tesse
Burt Kessler--Linda Gould
Lillian Stewart--Katherine Quevedo
Edmund Pollard--Radhika Iyer
Ida Frisky--Peggy Otake
Seth Compton--Tim Law
Richard Bone--Johanna Collier
Tom Merritt--Joshua St. Clair
Mrs. Merritt--Jill Trade
Elizabeth Childers--Renata Pavrey
Edith Conant--Snigdha Agrawal
Harry Williams--Michael Rhys
John Wasson--J.L. Short
Lyman King--Lily Thukral
Ann Rutledge--Peggy Otake
Rebecca Wasson--Vicky Muehleisen
Hannah Armstrong--Sarah Dittmore
Lucinda Matlock--Linda K. Vandermeer Kadota
Davis Matlock--Linda Gould
Herman Altman--Donald Guadagni
Wallace Ferguson--Herve Suys
Samuel Gardner--Joan Lambert Bailey
Dow Kritt--Yutaka Jay Miura (age 6)
William Goode--J.L. Short
Scholfield Huxley--Rebecca Otowa
Alfonso Churchill--Sarah Greaves
Gustav Richter--Joan Lambert Bailey
​William and Emily--Timothy and Linda Gould

---