BH. John Gould Fletcher: Secondary Materials

24. Reviews of Goblins and Pagodas (4), 1916-17.

Fletcher’s claims about ‘Zen’ principles in the preface elicit nearly as much comment as the poems themselves: W. S. B. (Boston Evening Transcript, 17 May 1916, p. 5) does not like the poems but finds the ideas set forth in the preface admirable; H. L. Mencken (Smart Set, February 1917, p. 400) believes the ideas of the preface ‘frequently wrong’ but not ‘unsane’; and E[dith] W[yatt] (New Republic 9 [18 November 1916], supplement, p. 11), admires the poems but insists that the preface is a ‘pedantic rubble heap’. The only mention of Japanese technique in the poems themselves is by Dorothy Dudley (Poetry9 [October 1916]: 43-47), who finds that the ‘symbols’ in Symphonies ‘arrange themselves with clarity and measure, and flow together as if some great Japanese had used them in a landscape’.