Books: Epitaphs

THE NEW SPOON RIVER—Edgar Lee Masters—Boni & Liveright ($2.50). The Spoon River Anthology was published, first serially, then in book form, just before the War. It consisted of compressed, ironic little dramas in verse—the biting epitaphs of the dead of Spoon River, the voices of the inarticulate suddenly articulate from the grave. It was variously welcomed, but always with interest, its powerful originality indisputable. The War is over, but people are still dying in Spoon River. The foreign born have come into their own. Spoon River has become “a ganglion for the monster brain Chicago.” An addition has been made to the old cemetery, to accommodate the ashes of the lately dead. The new names of the departed include such as Euripides Alexopoulos, Didymus Hupp, Saul Kostecki, Teresa Pashkowsky, Diamandi Viktoria, Yet Sing Low. Their problems have changed, too. They have become those of an age of faster transportation, closer communication of the city and the towns which draw their strength from the city. There remains the old keen irony, the uncompromising economy of expression, the free but careful technique. The book has not the importance of the first Spoon River—but only because its method is no longer an innovation.