Goblins and Pagodas: 'I am afraid of the night that is coming to me''

By John Gould Fletcher

John Gould Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on 3rd January 1886 to a socially prominent family.

He was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover before advancing to Harvard University which he attended from 1903 to 1907, before dropping out after his father's death.

As a young man Fletcher spent many years in England where he became part of the influential Imagist group of poets together with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound.

His first marriage came from a resumed relationship with the now married Florence Emily ‘Daisy’ Arbuthnot. Her adultery with Fletcher was the grounds for her divorce from Malcolm Arbuthnot. They married on 5th July 1916 but later divorced.

Fletcher first published in 1912, with ‘The Dominant City’ too much praise and admiration and followed this with other well-regarded volumes such as ‘Irradiations: Sand and Spray’, and ‘Goblins and Pagodas’.

In the late 1920s and 1930s Fletcher became increasingly active with a group of Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. They published the classic ‘I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition’.

Although he was highly regarded as a poet he was not very prolific. However, such was the undoubted quality that in 1939 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work ‘Selected Poems’. He was the first poet from the south to receive such an accolade. Fletcher’s other passion and pursuit was as an authority on modern painting, a subject on which he also published.

A second marriage followed in 1936 to the children’s author, Charlie May Simon. They built ‘Johnswood’, a residence on the bluffs of the Arkansas River and travelled frequently to New York for shots of modern culture and intellectual stimulation as well as to the American West and South for the climate after Fletcher developed chronic arthritis.

In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, ‘Life is My Song’.

His developing passion for his roots and background resulted in the writing of a history of his State and published in 1947; ‘Arkansas’.

By now Fletcher was suffering from bouts of depression and on 10th May 1950, he committed suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839677441

Book preview

Goblins and Pagodas by John Gould Fletcher

TO DAISY

John Gould Fletcher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on 3rd January 1886 to a socially prominent family.

He was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover before advancing to Harvard University which he attended from 1903 to 1907, before dropping out after his father's death.

As a young man Fletcher spent many years in England where he became part of the influential Imagist group of poets together with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound. 

His first marriage came from a resumed relationship with the now married Florence Emily ‘Daisy’ Arbuthnot. Her adultery with Fletcher was the grounds for her divorce from Malcolm Arbuthnot.  They married on 5th July 1916 but later divorced.

Fletcher first published in 1912, with ‘The Dominant City’ too much praise and admiration and followed this with other well-regarded volumes such as ‘Irradiations: Sand and Spray’, and ‘Goblins and Pagodas’.

In the late 1920s and 1930s Fletcher became increasingly active with a group of Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. They published the classic ‘I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition’.

Although he was highly regarded as a poet he was not very prolific.  However, such was the undoubted quality that in 1939 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work ‘Selected Poems’.  He was the first poet from the south to receive such an accolade.  Fletcher’s other passion and pursuit was as an authority on modern painting, a subject on which he also published.

A second marriage followed in 1936 to the children’s author, Charlie May Simon. They built ‘Johnswood’, a residence on the bluffs of the Arkansas River and travelled frequently to New York for shots of modern culture and intellectual stimulation as well as to the American West and South for the climate after Fletcher developed chronic arthritis.

In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, ‘Life is My Song’.

His developing passion for his roots and background resulted in the writing of a history of his State and published in 1947; ‘Arkansas’.

By now Fletcher was suffering from bouts of depression and on 10th May 1950, he committed suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Index of Contents

SECTION I. THE GHOSTS OF AN OLD HOUSE

PROLOGUE

PART I. THE HOUSE

Bedroom

Library

Indian Skull

Old Nursery

The Back Stairs

The Wall Cabinet

The Cellar

The Front Door

PART II. THE ATTIC

In the Attic

The Calendar in the Attic

The Hoopskirt

The Little Chair

In the Dark Corner

The Toy Cabinet

The Yardstick

PART III. THE LAWN

The Three Oaks

An Oak

Another Oak

The Old Barn

The Well

The Trees

Vision

Epilogue

SECTION II. SYMPHONIES

BLUE SYMPHONY

SOLITUDE IN THE CITY (SYMPHONY IN BLACK AND GOLD)

I. Words at Midnight

II. The Evening Rain

III. Street of Sorrows

IV. Song in the Darkness

GREEN SYMPHONY

GOLDEN SYMPHONY

WHITE SYMPHONY

MIDSUMMER DREAMS (SYMPHONY IN WHITE AND BLUE)

ORANGE SYMPHONY

RED SYMPHONY

VIOLET SYMPHONY

GREY SYMPHONY

POPPIES OF THE RED YEAR (A SYMPHONY IN SCARLET)

PREFACE

I

The second half of the nineteenth and the first fifteen years of the twentieth century have been a period of research, of experiment, of unrest and questioning. In science and philosophy we have witnessed an attempt to destroy the mechanistic theory of the universe as developed by Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer. The unknowable has been questioned: hypotheses have been shaken: vitalism and idealism have been proclaimed. In the arts, the tendency has been to strip each art of its inessentials and to disclose the underlying basis of pure form. In life, the principles of nationality, of racial culture, of individualism, of social development, of Christian ethics, have been discussed, debated, and examined from top to bottom, until at last, in the early years of the twentieth century we find all Europe, from the leaders of thought down to the lowest peasantry, engaged in a mutually destructive war of which few can trace the beginnings and none can foresee the end. The fundamental tenets of thought, art, life itself, have been shaken: and either civilization is destined to some new birth, or mankind will revert to the conditions of life, thought, and social intercourse