SOURCE: “Edgar Lee Masters,” in American Poetry since 1900, Henry Holt and Company, 1923, pp. 113-32.

In the following excerpt, Untermeyer comments on Spoon River, suggesting that the poems can be divided into three groups.

Born in the little town of Garnett, Kansas, in 1869, of old Puritan and pioneering stock, Edgar Lee Masters was wholly unknown until 1915 when his Spoon River Anthology (The Macmillan Company) became—mirabile dictu—a best-seller. Had Masters written nothing but this one volume or had he gained sufficient critical determination to publish nothing less distinguished, he would have remained the most arresting figure in contemporary poetry. As it is, Spoon River Anthology will, by virtue of its extraordinary power and originality, preserve its author's name long after his earlier and subsequent efforts are forgotten. Before his chief work, Masters wrote over four hundred poems and published five books of verse (blank verse plays and a...