Speaking without reason to lie or fear the consequences, they construct a picture of life in their town that is shorn of façades. They speak about the sorts of things one might expect: some recite their histories and turning points, others make observations of life from the outside, and petty ones complain of the treatment of their graves, while few tell how they really died. Each following poem is an epitaph of a dead citizen, delivered by the dead themselves. The poems were originally published in the magazine Reedy's Mirror. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses. Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town.
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