Starved Rock

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 159K words
Chapters: 16

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Starved Rock by Edgar Lee MastersAuthor: Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 5, 2014

Editor's review

Starved Rock is a narrative poetry collection by Edgar Lee Masters, set against the backdrop of Illinois's famous Starved Rock landform, telling in verse the history and human stories of this land. Masters is best known for Spoon River Anthology; he excels at portraying ordinary people's fates and inner lives in concise, restrained lines, and this book continues that approach of using a place name as the vehicle and human fates as the threads. For readers, its value lies not only in the poetry itself but in experiencing the geography and historical memory of the American Midwest through the lines. Reading it requires some experience with English poetry, and it is worth consulting maps and historical background materials for fuller understanding. It suits slow reading in quiet sessions and also serves as supplementary material for narrative poetry topics in American literature courses.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy American poetry and want to understand Masters's narrative poetry style
Readers interested in the history and local features of the American Midwest
Literature students who need English poetry selections for reading
Deep readers willing to read slowly and make annotations

Not a good fit for

Readers with weak English reading skills who need a Chinese translation
General readers who prefer tightly plotted novels
Readers who only want to skim quickly and are unwilling to consult background materials

Reading tips

Learn about the geography and history of Starved Rock first, then enter the poems; understanding will be smoother
Read slowly in the order of the poems, and after each group, record the correspondence between characters and places
Look up notes whenever you encounter unfamiliar place names or historical figures; no need to finish it all at once
Read alongside Masters's Spoon River Anthology to appreciate the consistency of his narrative poetry technique

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a poetry collection?

It is a narrative poetry collection by Edgar Lee Masters, unfolding verse narrative against the backdrop of the place Starved Rock; it is not a long novel with a continuous plot. It is better approached poem by poem rather than with the expectation of a complete storyline.

Can I understand it without American historical background?

You can read it, but understanding will be reduced. The book involves local history and figures; it is advisable to look at a basic introduction to Starved Rock and early Illinois history first, which will make it easier to grasp the emotions and references in the poems.

How difficult is the English? Is it suitable for beginners?

Masters's poetic language is relatively restrained and his sentence structures are not overly complex, but it is still literary English and involves historical place names and personal names. Readers with some experience in English poetry are more suitable; beginners are advised to use notes or a guide.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950 Author

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) was an American poet best known for Spoon River Anthology, a collection of verse epitaphs in which the dead of a small town speak for themselves. In spare, unsentimental lines, these poems expose the secrets, disappointments, and ironies hidden beneath ordinary lives, breaking with the solemn tone of traditional elegy and leaving a clear mark on the subjects and voice of modern American poetry. The library holds nine of his works, including, besides Spoon River Anthology, The Open Sea, The Great Valley, Starved Rock, Mitch Miller, Songs and Satires, Toward the Gulf, and Domesday Book. These touch on nature and regional landscape, the historical memory of the American Midwest, and observations of social life. Masters is generally noted for his realistic portraits of people and places, written in plain language with an ironic edge. Public information about his life and education is limited, so no details are given here.