Poetry
Goblins and Pagodas
John Gould Fletcher · 1916
Synopsis
Two groups of poems. The first moves through an old house with columns, the house, the attic, the lawn, and draws from its furniture and places the emotions of a childhood: the room where the father died, the library, an Indian skull, the back stairs, the cellar, an old portrait, the oaks, the well. The second brings together eleven symphonies, each placed under a colour, blue, green, gold, white, orange, red; according to the preface, they trace the phases in the life of an artist, who is not necessarily the author.
Context
The volume appeared in Boston from Houghton Mifflin in 1916, the year in which its author figures in the second anthology of the Imagist group; it is dedicated to Daisy Arbuthnot, whom he married in July. Several pieces had appeared in The Egoist, Poetry and The Little Review. The old house is the one Albert Pike had built in Little Rock in 1840 and which the poet's father bought in 1889. The preface, dated January 1916, gives the arts a common ground, invokes Delacroix, Scriabin and the colour organ, and calls these symphonies dramas of the soul. The author turned away from them about ten years later for a regional poetry.
Who it is for
A long collection, to be taken by sections. Only one symphony, the white one, has been translated into French.
Prizes and reception
The collection of the colour symphonies, which critics link both to Imagism and to music.
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