Spoon River Anthology

I have read the author's biography before I read the book once again and I learned a lot of interesting things about this guy. I learned that he was born in Petersburg, Illinois where I was at a basketball game tonight. I also learned that he had wrote a lot of other poetry coming from where he was. He wrote a lot on people's attitudes and kind of like what Thoreau's writings were. The second paragraph in this biography said, "The realism and irony expressed in Spoon River Anthology were at odds with the romantic and sentimental poetry popular at the time" (Masters 514). I typed this quote out because it talked about the story that I had read and it gave a little thought as to how it was written.

I read an excerpt of Spoon River Anthology and it was called The Hill. Each character in this story had a different characteristic associated with them. Here is a quote from the story to give you more of an idea as to what I am talking about, "Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all are sleeping on the hill (Masters). Each one of them had a different behavior and that is the point that Thoreau was trying to get across to people. People are obsessed with making ourselves feel good and we really need to look at the big picture that is in front of us. This goes with the concept of Masters in this story that he has wrote. Here is another quote, "Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove, Of what Abe Lincoln said One time at Springfield" (Masters). I typed in this quote because I found it interesting that he put in Abe Lincoln, which is obviously a huge icon in our society today. Especially in Springfield, because he lived here and was such a huge icon. This is what I was going with when I typed in the beginning of the blog when I said that he wrote stuff in his stories that contributed to his lifetime in Illinois.

Bibliography

"Excerpt from." EReader.com:. A Barnes & Noble. Web. 02 Mar. 2012.

Masters, Edgar Lee. "Before You Read." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 514. Print.