Spoon River Anthology
Do-It-Yourself Reading
Arden Gild Hall, upstairs by the fire • Saturday night, Nov 2, 2013 • 7:30pm
SIGN-UP LIST Rev.1
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Pg# refers to page in Spoon River Anthology (1962) or (#N) The New Spoon River (1968) by Edgar Lee Masters, Collier Books paperback editions
pg #
POEM /connects to
NOTES
1
23
The Hill
introduction
2
161
Mrs. Kessler
a laundress
3
7N
Edith Bell /Mrs. Kessler
telephone operator
4
166
Hortense Robbins
socialite; took the cure at Baden-Baden
5
106
Russian Sonia
“the humorous thing called life”
6
66
Dorcas Gustine
nasty thing
7
214
Calvin Campbell
lovely plant metaphor: poison ivy vs. arbutus
8
213
Ami Green
male. “eternal youth is just arrested growth”
9
169
Walter Simmons
would-be Edison
10
200
Perry Zoll
Scientist smugly thanks the County Scientific Assn
11
53
Conrad Siever
in memory of Arden’s Frank Akutowicz
12
254
J. Milton Miles
“I couldn’t tell The true from the false”
13
212
Father Malloy
group reading about Father Malloy
14
108
Barney Hainsfeather
Jewish; buried in the wrong cemetery
15
265
Lydia Humphrey
old maid finds joy in her church congregation
16
40
Emily Sparks
unmarried school teacher
17
255
Faith Matheny
mystic
18
28
Robert Fulton Tanner
patented rat trap
19
102
Wendell P. Bloyd
blasphemer or truth teller?
20
62 N
Henry Zoll, the miller
lesson of the mill pond and the mill stream
21
240
Davis Matlock
metaphor: life as a bee hive
RELIGION, FAITH, SPIRITUALISM
MARRIAGE & FAMILY
22
239
Lucinda Matlock
joyous poem: “It takes life to love life.”
23
41
Trainor, the Druggist
compares mixing of chemicals to marriages
24
158
Roscoe Purkapile
told his wife he had been kidnapped by pirates
25
159
Mrs. Purkapile /R.Purkapile, Mrs Wms
didn’t believe him, but took him back anyway
26
172
Searcy Foote
chloroform & rich Aunt Persis
27
113
Rev. Lemuel Wiley /Mrs Bliss
“saved” the marriage of Mr & Mrs Bliss
READER
28
111
Mrs. Charles Bliss /Rev Wiley
stuck in a hateful marriage
29
208
Elizabeth Childers
talking to her unborn child
30
84
Nellie Clark
tainted goods
31
63 N
Lucille Lusk /Lucius Atherton
virginity is over-rated
32
78
Lucius Atherton /many women
the local Don Juan
33
179N
Minnie Lee /Isa Nutter
prostitute: “Was I different from any of you women…?”
34
107
Isa Nutter /Minnie Lee
35
44
Minerva Jones
kids disapproved when, as an older man, he married Minnie (we
assume this is Minnie Lee from The New Spoon River)
village poetess. Died after an abortion.
36
47
Mrs. Meyers
wife of doctor who performed the abortion
SEX
POLITICS, REFORMERS, PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY
37
182
Voltaire Johnson
self-righteous reformer
38
42
Daisy Fraser
prostitute points out her fines contributed to the school fund
39
193
E. C. Culbertson /Ed.Whedon, T. Rhodes
others got the credit for building the new court house
40
128
Ida Chicken
politics
41
105
John M. Church
lawyer makes a fortune defeating claims against the mining co.
42
183
English Thornton
rise up against the decadent people in power
43
241
Herman Altman
reformer, wanting no monuments
DISILLUSION
44
179
Abel Melveny
a good machine
45
237
Rutherford McDowell
photographer, pondering the faces of the old
46
192
Jonathan Houghton
“the boy returned worn out with life”
47
109
Petit, the Poet
“what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the
pines?”
THE END
48
191
Dillard Sissman
beautiful images of flying a kite
49
257
Willie Metcalf
part of the earth
50
83
Fiddler Jones
not a single regret
Master’s Epitaph
Here, world, I pass you like an orange to a child…”
51
Elizabeth Varley