Сборник стихов Эдгара Ли Мастерса «Антология реки Споун»

Poetry Collection by Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology (1915) is a collection of short free verse poems by Edgar Lee Masters. The poems collectively narrate the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Masters's home town of Lewistown, Illinois. The aim of the poems is to demystify rural and small town American life. The collection includes 212 separate characters, in all providing 244 accounts of their lives, losses, and manners of death. Many of the poems contain cross references that create a candid tapestry of the community. The poems originally were published in 1914 in the St. Louis, Missouri, literary journal Reedy's Mirror, under the pseudonym Webster Ford.

Many of the characters who make appearances in Spoon River Anthology were based on people that Masters knew or heard of in the two towns in which he grew up: Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois. Masters sometimes substantially disguised the names of these real life inspirations, but he sometimes disguised them only barely and, in a few cases, not at all. The first bound edition of Spoon River Anthology was published by The Macmillan Company in 1915 with a total of 213 poems. Masters added 33 new poems in the 1916 edition, expanding on new characters with connections to some of the originals. Among these new additions were "Andy the Night Watch", "Isa Nutter," "Plymouth Rock Joe" and "The Epilogue."

Spoon River Anthology was a critical and commercial success. Ezra Pound's review of the Spoon River poems begins: "At last! At last America has discovered a poet." Carl Sandburg's review is similarly glowing: "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." The book sold 80,000 copies over four years, making it an international bestseller by the standards of the day. Meanwhile, those who lived in the Spoon River region objected to their portrayal in the anthology, particularly as so many of the poems' characters were based on real people. The book was banned from Lewistown schools and libraries until 1974. (Masters claimed "My mother disliked [the anthology]; my father adored it".) Despite this, the anthology remained widely read in Lewistown; local historian Kelvin Sampson notes that "Every family in Lewistown probably had a sheet of paper or a notebook hidden away with their copy of the Anthology, saying who was who in town". The second work was less successful and received poorer reviews. In 1933, Masters wrote a retrospective essay on the composition of Spoon River Anthology and the response it received, entitled "The Genesis of Spoon River". In 2015, the town celebrated the 100th anniversary of the anthology's publication with tours, exhibitions, and theatrical performances. It is also often used in second year characterization work in the Meisner technique of actor training. Spoon River Anthology is credited as an initial inspiration for the "audio log" storytelling device in video games as it first appeared in the game System Shock, a narrative technique that became a standard trope of narrative games.

Andy Kaufman performed a rendition of “Spoon River Anthology” in 1969 when he attended Grahm Junior College. His dialogue contained references to cancer, which would ultimately be deemed his cause of death fifteen years later. Percy Grainger wrote three arrangements (for piano, two pianos and orchestra) of a fiddle tune called "Spoon River", inspired by the Anthology and dedicated to Masters. In 1943, the book was published in Italy (translated by Fernanda Pivano). This version was issued on LP by the Italian Cetra label in 1959, the readers being Paolo Carlini, Arnoldo Foa, Vera Gherarducci and Elsa Merlini
In 1951, La Scala premiered Mario Pergallo's La Collina (The Hill), which set several of Masters' poems in operatic form. In 1952, Swedish composer Laci Boldemann set four poems from the anthology as "Epitaphs (4), for mezzo soprano & string orchestra, Op. 10" recorded in 2008 by Anne Sofie von Otter. In 1956, the German composer (October 25, 1894 December 15, 1972) set a selection of four poems as a song cycle for baritone and accordion titled "Die Toten von Spoon River." On June 2, 1957, the CBS Radio Network broadcast a radio adaptation of Spoon River Anthology, "Epitaphs", as part of its CBS Radio Workshop series. The adaptation was directed and narrated by William Conrad, with a cast including Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, Parley Baer, Richard Crenna, John Dehner and John McIntire. In 1963, Charles Aidman adapted Spoon River Anthology into a theater production that is still widely performed today. From 1964 to 1974, photographer Mario Giacomelli produced "Omaggio a Spoon River," a series of abstract photographs inspired by Edgar Lee Master's collection of poems. In 1971, Italian songwriter Fabrizio De André released Non al denaro non all'amore né al cielo, a concept album inspired by Spoon River Anthology. In 1985, British composer Andrew Downes set a selection of five poems as a song cycle entitled "Songs from Spoon River." In 1987, Spanish writer Jon Juaristi wrote a poem titled Spoon River, Euskadi (included in his book Suma de varia intención) to denounce the crimes of the Basque separatist group ETA. In 2000, alt country singer Richard Buckner adapted eighteen poems of the Spoon River Anthology into songs for his album The Hill. Nine are sung, and nine are represented by instrumentals. In 2004, Walter Dean Myers published Here in Harlem, a collection of poems inspired by Spoon River Anthology. Since 2004, writer and songwriter Mariana Figueroa and artist and author Francisco Tomsich have worked on the Rio Cuchara project, a cycle of songs based on Spoon River Anthology poems. In 2005, the Utah State University's Creative Learning Environment Lab created a serious game titled Voices of Spoon River, in which the player explores an environment and solved puzzles based on the Spoon River Anthology. Songwriter Michael Peter Smith's song "Spoon River" is loosely based on Spoon River Anthology. In 2011 "Spoon River Anthology" was adapted by Tom Andolora into a theatre production with music, called The Spoon River Project. It was performed at the Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. It is published by Playscripts. In 2014, Toronto's Soulpepper theatre launched the musical production Spoon River, adapted by Mike Ross and artistic director Albert Schultz. The musical opened Off Broadway in July 2017. In 2015, "Spoon River Anthology" was adapted by Maureen Lucy O'Connell into a play with music called "Spoon River: the Cemetery on the Hill." The adaptation included traditional songs as well as original material written by O'Connell. It was produced at the Eclectic Company Theatre in Valley Village, California. On November 26, 2015, the documentary Ritorno a Spoon River, directed by Francesco Conversano and Nene Grignaffini, premiered at the Torino Film Festival. The documentary, filmed in Lewistown, celebrates the centennial of the anthology. In 2017, Return to Spoon River, a musical adapted from the anthology by Martin Tackel, premiered at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row in New York City. On March 13, 2021, 'Spoon River Anthology' was presented as online verse reading by the Oxford University Dramatic Society, accompanied by a limited edition booklet illustrated by students of the Ruskin.