He used various styles from classical Greek forms to epigrams. Playing around with the form of his poems, he settled on the idea of writing about the people he had known in his youth. Up until 1915 he had published a few books of poetry and several essays but had received little or no critical attention. Beyond that, however, he harbored deep literary ambitions and started publishing his poetry early on under various pseudonyms.

Raised in Illinois and the Midwest, with its historical connection to Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Lee Masters trained as a lawyer and would work some thirty years for a firm in Chicago. His collection of short poems, The Spoon River Anthology, is perhaps his most famous contribution to the art and was composed late on in life when he was approaching his 50s. Today we would call that kind of effort “world-building.” Masters, I think, would have simply called it life.Born in Kansas in 1868, Edgar Lee Masters was the author of a wide range of novels and books of poetry that set him up as one of the major literary voices of America. It’s a real thrill to bring this town to life with the help of another 50 wonderful actors, and it’s mind-boggling to reflect that all these characters sprang from the pen of a single man. In this installment of Spoon River Anthology, we meet tragic figures, heroes and heroines, a few outright villains, the embittered, the regretful, the peaceful, the lost. Masters’s epic poem cycle is, of course, all about small details combining into a larger picture.

As the we work our way through the full cycle - and as the poems and characters pile up - stepping back also enables us to see the emerging outlines of this fully imagined and wholly believable small town. Releasing the poems in sets of 50 allows us to do just that.

So it’s a real joy now and again to take a step back, share the most recent performances we’ve recorded, and reflect on the project’s progress to date. The logistics of Chatterbox’s Spoon River Anthology project are relatively complex, and while we’re busy getting all the performers auditioned, scheduled, recorded, and edited, it’s easy to lose track of the bigger picture.

George gray spoon river