Poetry Writing Project

Putting all this together into a really fun writing project that you will treasure forever.

(Either that or you will curse me for making you do such a dumb assignment.)

Edgar Lee Masters wrote a collection of poetry called the Spoon River Anthology. This book consisted of over 200 free-verse poems, each one from the viewpoint of one of the townspeople. In them, the people expressed their opinions about their lives and life in general.

All kinds of characters spoke: the night watchman, several doctors and lawyers, the village poetess and so on. Using the first person (I) point of view, they gossiped and complained, chattered and accused -- you know like people do. In the course of their monologues, all sides of the town including its seamy corrupt sides, were revealed.

It was an interesting concept that people of the time had mixed emotions about.

(Probably because many of the characters were people that others recognized)

Masters puts an even stranger spin on Spoon River Anthology. All of his characters are dead, so what they said came from "beyond the grave" where no one could reach them.

This is your final writing assignment. You are going to write your own Spoon River; only your speakers are high school kids in your school who are quite alive and have a lot to say, or people in your neighborhood, or people in your workplace, or people in just about any other place where people might gather. Whether you use free verse or a more traditional rhyming verse is up to you. If possible mix the two. Write all the poems in the first person point of view and make them at least 12 lines each.