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美国有正在衰退的欧洲文明所缺乏的东西，“一种必要的抵抗，那就是根本性的给和取，对艺术至关重要”。无疑，约翰·古尔德·弗莱彻（John Gould Fletcher，1886—1950）已达到这一点，他的《诗选》赢得1939年普利策奖。他跟T.S.艾略特和埃兹拉·庞德一起，曾属于一个移居国外者的实验小组，他们感觉到欧洲比美国更适宜于艺术家。他居留国外二十年以上，在那里写作大量实验性的自由诗。但自从1933年起，他生活在美国。
弗莱彻先生在阿肯色州度过童年时代。他的父亲，一个邦联老兵，来自苏格兰拓荒者的一个家族。诗人在家里跟着他妈妈学习，妈妈是一个有学问有才华、有德国和丹麦血统的妇女。他讨厌数学，喜爱历史，“觉得他父亲的房子里战前南方的存在深深地影响他”，读斯科特、坦尼森、柯勒律治、莎士比亚和《圣经》。在安多弗和哈佛的中学和大学时代，他开始写诗。他在毕业之前离校了。他以为他想成为一个考古学家；但当他出国花费了五年时间跟他的文学朋友一起，阅读法国象征主义，写下很多他从来没有出版的诗，以及虽然出版了而他自己从不喜欢的一本诗集。这个时候他开始赋予他的诗歌以自由形式，“按照感觉的情形和他的材料的条件”，他开始写关于“一个人能听见的、看见的、嗅到的和尝到的东西”。艾米·洛威尔发现他的这种诗歌，说服他在她著名的、广为探讨的选集《意象派诗人》里露脸。从那时以来，他不但写了很多诗歌和文学评论，而且写了他的自传。1933年他从阿肯色大学获得法学博士学位，1939年他的《诗选》获得普利策奖。
他结婚两次，后来生活在阿肯色州的罗兰德。
他的作品有：《火与酒》（1913），《傻瓜的金子》（1913），《站统治地位的城市》（1913），《自然之书》（1913），《傍晚的异象》（1913），《辐照，沙子与喷雾》（1916），《小妖精与宝塔》（1916），《日本彩色木刻水印画》（1918），《生命之树》（1918），《碎浪与花岗岩》（1921），《保罗·高更，他的生活与艺术》（传记，1921），《前奏曲与交响乐》（1922），《预言》（1925），《亚当的分枝》（1926），《约翰·史密斯——也是风中奇缘》（1928），《黑色的石头》（1928），《两个边疆》（1930），《叹息碑墙哀歌》（1935），《阿肯色史诗》（1936），《生活是我的歌》（自传，1937），《诗选》（1938，获普利策奖）。
许多学者认为约翰·古尔德·弗莱彻，这位阿肯色州诗人和散文家，是二十世纪最有影响力的文学人物之一。1938年，他获得普利策诗歌奖，并参与了塑造了20世纪文学的农业主义、意象主义、现代主义和浪漫主义的文学运动。（Character Collection UA LITTLE ROCK CENTER FOR ARKANSAS HISTORY AND CULTURE）
Background
Fletcher lived in England for a large portion of his life. While in Europe he associated with Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and other Imagist poets; he was one of the six Imagists who adopted the name and stuck to it until their aims were achieved. Fletcher resumed a liaison with Florence Emily "Daisy" Arbuthnot (née Goold) at her house in Kent. She had been married to Malcolm Arbuthnot and Fletcher's adultery with her was the grounds for the divorce. The couple married on July 5, 1916. The marriage produced no children, but Arbuthnot's son and daughter from her previous marriage lived with the couple, who later divorced.
On January 18, 1936, Fletcher married a noted author of children's books, Charlie May Simon. The two of them built "Johnswood", a residence on the bluffs of the Arkansas River, then outside Little Rock. They traveled frequently to New York for the intellectual stimulation, and to the American West and South for the climate, after Fletcher developed chronic arthritis.
Fletcher suffered from depression, and on May 10, 1950, died by suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas. Fletcher is buried at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock. A branch of the Central Arkansas Library System is named in his honor.
Poetry
In 1913 Ezra Pound in his New Freewoman review commended Fletcher for the individuality of rhythm in his first volume of poems. Those early works include Irradiations: Sand and Spray (1915), and Goblins and Pagodas (1916). Amy Lowell said of him, "No one is more absolute master of the rhythm of verse libre". Fletcher invented the term 'polyphonic prose' to describe some poetic experiments of Amy Lowell, a form he experimented with in Goblins & Pagodas. In later poetic works Fletcher returned to more traditional forms. These include The Black Rock (1928), Selected Poems (1938), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1939, "South Star" published by Macmillan (1941), and The Burning Mountain (1946). Fletcher later moved back to Arkansas to reconnect with his roots. The subject of his works turned increasingly towards Southern issues and traditionalism.
In the late 1920s and 1930s Fletcher was active with a group of Southern writers and poets known as the Southern Agrarians. This group published the classic Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand, a collection of essays rejecting Modernity and Industrialism. In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, Life is My Song, and in 1947 he published Arkansas, a history of his home state.
Johnswood, his Little Rock home, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Writings
Irradiations Sand and Spray, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1915
Goblins and Pagodas, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916
Japanese Prints, Four Seas, 1918, LC 18017484
The Tree of Life, London, Chattus Windus, 1918
Breakers and Granite, New York, MacMillan Co., 1921
Paul Gauguin, His Life and Art, N. L. Brown, 1921, LC 20114210
Preludes and Symphonies, Macmillan, 1930 ISBN 978-1-4255-0347-5
XXIV Elegies, Writers' Editions, Santa Fe, 1935
Life Is My Song: The Autobiography Of John Gould Fletcher, Farrar & Rinehart, 1937 ISBN 978-0-404-17098-1
South Star, New York, MacMillan Co., 1941
References
Hughes, Glenn, Imagism and the Imagists, Stanford University Press, New York 1931.
Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists, Stanford University Press, New York, 1931
Jamison, Kay R. (1994). "This Net Throwne Upon the Heavens". Touched with fire: manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament. Simon and Schuster. p. 249. ISBN 978-0-684-83183-1. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
"Central Arkansas Library System". Central Arkansas Library System. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
Imagist Poetry, (ed. Peter Jone s) Penguin Books Ltd, London 1972 ISBN 0-14-042147-5
Lowell Amy, Tendencies of Modern American Poetry, Macmillan, New York, 1917
Miss Lowell's Discovery: Polyphonic Prose Poetry, Chicago 1915
Imagist Poetry, (ed. Peter Jones) Penguin Books Ltd, London 1972 ISBN 0-14-042147-5
Further reading
John Gould Fletcher and Imagism, Edmund S. de Chasca, University of Missouri Press, 1978
Fierce Solitude, A Life of John Gould Fletcher, Ben Johnson III, University of Arkansas Press, 1994