Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dominant City: 'It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire''
    Dominant City: 'It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire''
    Dominant City: 'It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire''
    Ebook58 pages37 minutes

    Dominant City: 'It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire''

    By John Gould Fletcher

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateFeb 1, 2021
    ISBN9781839677434
    Dominant City: 'It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire''

    Read more from John Gould Fletcher

    Related to Dominant City

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jasmine Fingers

      Aug 22, 2019

      Jasmine Fingers
      14 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2020

      How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four oars,bearing them up and down to Kaza

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Dad’s Ode To Autumn

      Oct 20, 2021

      My Dad’s Ode To Autumn
      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Centos After Serhiy Zhadan

      Jan 1, 2022

      —based on first lines by Serhiy Zhadan Take only what is important. Take the letters,the dark shattered wicked winter. You hear everything passing,stories connected with murders, knife wounds. Remember how winter began in your town.The hot heart of t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Power And The Passion

      Sep 19, 2021

      The Power And The Passion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland

      May 1, 2020

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 4, 2018

      I have no hesitation in saying that I have ever considered the [Electoral College] as the most dangerous blot in our Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will some day hit. —Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Hay, August 17, 1823 He who

      3 min read

    • Article

      In-Between Days

      Jul 7, 2020

      The place I miss the most in Istanbul isn’t a place at all — or, at least, not a destination. It’s the space that divides the city and joins it together, the in-between that made Istanbul Istanbul in the beginning and has made it Istanbul every day s

      2 min read

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Best Rain in Literature

      Apr 14, 2020

      The Best Rain in Literature
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Waste Land turns 100

      Oct 19, 2022

      The Waste Land turns 100
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Tale Of Two Christmases

      Dec 17, 2020

      A Tale Of Two Christmases
      7 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter From Cincinnati

      Sep 19, 2022

      Letter From Cincinnati
      5 min read

    • Article

      In Search of Lost Travels

      Jun 4, 2018

      In Search of Lost Travels
      9 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: The North Wind By Anne Brontë

      May 8, 2023

      That wind is from the North, I know it well;No other breeze could have so wild a swell.Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell,Then faintly dies,And softly sighs,And moans and murmurs mournfully.I know its language; thus is speaks to me – ‘I have

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Devil’s Dictionary

      Jul 6, 2021

      Select entries from Ambrose Bierce’s lexicon of cynicism, bitterness, and humor, produced over a 30-year period beginning in 1881. APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence. BARD, n. A person who makes rhymes. The word is one of the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Curled Thyme

      Dec 6, 2019

      Curled Thyme
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dominant City

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Dominant City - John Gould Fletcher

      Dominant City 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.

      Index of Contents

      TO THE FRENCH POETS OF TO-DAY

      THE DOMINANT CITY

      THE HOARDINGS

      THE DESERTED FACTORY

      THE EVENING CLOUDS

      LONDON EVENING

      PLEASURE'S AWAKENING

      THE NIGHT OF PLEASURE

      EROS

      SONG OF A NIGHT

      LONDON AT NIGHT

      IN THE CITY OF NIGHT

      TRAGIC NIGHT

      TRIUMPHANT NIGHT

      THE HOUR OF PEACE

      SATURDAY NIGHT: HORSES GOING TO PASTURE

      THE GREAT MOON

      IN THE NIGHT

      FROM THE NIGHT TO THE DAWN

      DAWN

      THE CLOUDS

      FACTORY CHIMNEYS

      BACK STREETS

      JOY

      THE AGE OF STEEL

      TWILIGHT

      CHORUS FOR THE TRAGEDY OF MAN

      MIDWINTER MOON OVER THE CITY

      DAWN IN ITALY AND IN LONDON

      SATURDAY NIGHT IN FLEET STREET

      AT THE MEETING OF THE DAYS

      THE BANNERS

      THE MAGICIANS

      THE FORCES AT WORK IN THE CITY

      THE FORGING OF THE SUN

      AUTUMN SUNSET

      TWO AUTUMN DAWNS

      I.

      II.

      AN

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1