In the pantheon of American poetry, few figures embody the restless spirit of early twentieth-century modernism quite like John Gould Fletcher. Born into the genteel society of Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 3, 1886, Fletcher would traverse continents and literary movements, ultimately crafting a body of work that bridged the gap between traditional American verse and the revolutionary experiments of European mode…
“It is time to create something new. It is time to strip poetry of meaningless tatters of form, and to clothe her in new, suitable garments.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
In the autumn of 1914, as the Great War began tearing Europe apart, a young American poet lay dying in a sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. Adelaide Crapsey was only thirty-six years old, and though she had published little during her lifetime, she had invented a new poetic form that would outlive her by generations. The cinquain, her creation, distilled the essence of imagist poetry into five crystalline lines, e…
“I'll be back at work next year—see if I'm not.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Wonder
