“I have written much beside the Spoon Rivers.”

Rejects the idea that his literary identity should be confined to his famous anthology · Letter to August Derleth, 1939

• Identity
• Literature
• Writing

“Yet you know that it was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909, the Greek Anthology.”

Acknowledging the classical work that helped inspire his distinctive poetic form · Dedication and prefatory note (1918)

• Art
• Memory
• Poetry

“There were fifty-three poems with names drawn from the Petersburg, New Salem, Concord, Sandridge country, and sixty-six from the Spoon River country.”

Provides Masters's own account of how extensively the anthology drew on the geography of his youth · The Genesis of Spoon River

• Memory
• Place
• Writing