Books in Brief: Selected Letters of Vachel Lindsay

Selected Letters of Vachel Lindsay, edited by Marc Chenetier (Burt Franklin, 442 pp., $21.95).

Vachel Lindsay was a visionary writer who to his horror became the victim of a public that refused to take him seriously. In this collection of letters Lindsay is revealed as the man of vision rather than the jingleman and jazz poet. Lindsay, the first movie critic, realized at an early stage that the invention of moving pictures would bring a profound change to life in America. He feared that unless language were made more accessible, more “democratic,” more a part of these new developments, vast segments of America’s people would be lost to its writers. It was his ambition to create works that would embody these changes, works that as far as possible would not only sound but look striking enough to attract the interest of the man in the street. In letters to writers such as Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, H. L. Mencken, and his friend Harriet Monroe, he expounded his theories at length, and, though frequently discouraged, he held fast to his beliefs. These letters provide an instructive if chastening account of a man who was ahead of his time. We are familiar today with art forms that attempt to synthesize sight, sense, and sound, and, acknowledging the immense impact of television and film, we can appreciate Lindsay’s concern to harness the beast before it ran off, pulling us headlong with it into the unknown.

JC

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Judith Chettle

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Selected Letters of Vachel Lindsay, edited by Marc Chenetier (Burt Franklin, 442 pp., $21.95).

Vachel Lindsay was a visionary writer who to his horror became the victim of a public that refused to take him seriously. In this collection of letters Lindsay is revealed as the man of vision rather than the jingleman and jazz poet. Lindsay, the first movie critic, realized at an early stage that the invention of moving pictures would bring a profound change to life in America. He feared that unless language were made more accessible, more “democratic,” more a part of these new developments, vast segments of America’s people would be lost to its writers. It was his ambition to create works that would embody these changes, works that as far as possible would not only sound but look striking enough to attract the interest of the man in the street. In letters to writers such as Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, H. L. Mencken, and his friend Harriet Monroe, he expounded his theories at length, and, though frequently discouraged, he held fast to his beliefs. These letters provide an instructive if chastening account of a man who was ahead of his time. We are familiar today with art forms that attempt to synthesize sight, sense, and sound, and, acknowledging the immense impact of television and film, we can appreciate Lindsay’s concern to harness the beast before it ran off, pulling us headlong with it into the unknown.