SOURCE: “Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg,” in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, The Macmillan Company, 1917, pp. 139-200.

In the following excerpt, Lowell provides an analysis of Spoon River and of Masters's career as a Midwestern poet.

Mr. Masters is the author of a number of books, but one has made his fame; and it seems probable that only one will outlive the destructive work of time. But this one is so remarkable that it may very well come to be considered among the great books of American literature. I refer, of course, to The Spoon River Anthology. I think it is not too much to say that no book, in the memory of the present generation, has had such a general effect upon the reading community as has this. Every one who reads at all has read it. Its admirers are not confined to those who like...