The Enduring River

Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915) was "the most read and most talked-of volume of poetry that had ever been written in America." The author then returned to the Illinois folk and countryside in a sequel, The New Spoon River (1924). Less well known, even among scholars, are the dozens of other poems Masters set in the area he made famous.

Now Herbert K. Russell brings together for the first time the best of these lesser-known poems in a third collection of Spoon River writings, an interesting and useful counterpoint to the brooding diatribes, ironies, and denunciations that make up much of Spoon River Anthology. In these poems Masters has returned to his "heart's home."