By Jennifer Young
How many secrets do you know? Dark secrets, secrets with life-altering potential, secrets that might haunt a soul even after it’s been confined to a grave? In 1915, a writer named Edgar Lee Masters decided to ‘spill the beans,’ so to speak, on the secrets he knew, secrets involving affairs, illegitimate children, and other sinful deeds. He created a volume of poems based on real people he knew or had heard of, people who he veiled thinly in his work–and some not at all.
The volume, titled The Spoon River Anthology , was much reviled in the area of Lewistown, where Masters was from; so much so, that Masters own mother voted for the book to be banned by the town library. However, the anthology has also put Lewistown on the literary map of America for all time–and if you visit the Oak Hill Cemetery, you can trace the voices of Master’s anthology to where they are “sleeping on the hill.”
In his controversial Spoon River Anthology , Masters wrote about the lives of the people around him–the stories he heard about soldiers, heartbroken girls, and, of course, their secrets. Although he attempted to hide the identities of some of his characters, he ensured that others were easily identifiable. The anthology is a collection of more than 200 characters who speak in verse from the grave. Each character discusses his or her life and manner of death. As many of these real-life individuals made their home in Lewistown and nearby towns, they came to be buried at Lewistown’s Oak Hill Cemetery, which is, today, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
