Writing prompt: With a nod to Spoon River Anthology

Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. This book was actually printed the same time as Robert Frost’s first book and the two were in tight competition.  As I understand it, Spoon River outsold Frosts’ second book, North of Bostonwhich was published just a little earlier than Spoon River’s publication.  Spoon River Anthology includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses.  Imagine you walk through a grave yard and as you stand before a tombstone, the spirit of the person buried here rises up and tells you a little story of their life, and sometimes how they died.

Here are two examples  from Spoon River Anthology:

Doc Hill

I went up and down the streets

Here and there by day and night,

Through all hours of the night caring for the poor

who were sick.

Do you know why?

My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.

And I turned to the people and poured out my

love to them.

Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns

on the day of my funeral,

And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.

But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able

To hold to the railing of the new life

When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree

At the grave,

Hiding herself, and her grief!

Edgar Lee Masters

Daniel M'Cumber

When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,

I meant to return for you, yes I did.

But Laura, my landlady's daughter,

Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.

Then after some years whom should I meet

But Georgine Miner from Niles—sprout

Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished

Before the war all over Ohio.

Her dilettante lover had tired of her,

And she turned to me for strength and solace.

She was some kind of a crying thing

One takes in one's arms, and all at once

It slimes your face with its running nose,

And voids its essence all over you;

Then bites your hand and springs away.

And there you stand bleeding and smelling to heaven!

Why, Mary McNeely, I was not worthy

To kiss the hem of your robe!

Edgar Lee Masters

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:  is to invent your own cemetery, and write free verse poems of people you imagine buried there, and what brief story would they tell you if they had the chance.  On your mark, get set, GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!