Musing Mondays

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Your favorite poem, or collection of poetry?

Musing Mondays comes courtesy of Jenn at Books and A Beat.  I have chosen to respond to her "Random Question."

Ordinarily, I would say that I am not a poetry person but my favorite collection of poems is Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.  This is a collection of monologues beyond the grave from the residents of a fictional town in the Midwest.

The poems are all free verse.  Some are humorous, some are dark, and some are sad.  Because the speakers are dead, they speak the truth which can be harsh and brutal.  The reader learns the real behind the scenes information about the town and its residents.  Often the poems revealed the connections between the speakers.  "Ollie McGee" and then "Fletcher McGee" are wife and husband and the reader learns the secrets of their marriage from each one's perspective revealing quite different ideas.  The humor of their sad marriage lies in the revelations of the individual points of view.

The English teacher I had in my junior year of high school used poems from this collection frequently as lead-ins to thematically linked other works of literature.  I think that is why I enjoyed them so much - to see the universal connections.

There is an online edition of Spoon River Anthology at Bartleby.com.