John Gould Fletcher: “My Happiness is like this sand”

John Gould Fletcher: “My Happiness is like this sand: I let it run out of my hand”

John Gould Fletcher (b. Jan 3, 1886 ─ d. May 10, 1950) was an imagist poet. (One of the six imagists who couldn’t survive depression). His thoughts and poems triggered the hearts of many poem lovers and fall them in love with his rhythmic poetry. He ended all by committing suicide in the neighboring pond, forcefully and dreadful inhaling of water. His early work, irradiation; Sand and Spray (1915), and Goblin and Pagodas (1916). Mr. Fletcher had won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1939. Ezra Pound, the American poet, and critic complimented Fletcher in his The New Freewoman Review in 1913 and Amy Lowell, an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts wrote of him,

No one is absolute master of the rhythm of verse libre.

Amy Lowell

His poem, Blue Water let us instantly create beautiful images that take us through the heat of mid-summer, the sky and make us remember the relaxing sound of shore and sands. That fictitious power urges us to go out and explore the sea around with some music.

Blue Water

Sea-violins are playing on the sands;
Curved bows of blue and white are flying over the pebbles,
See them attack the chords--dark basses, glinting trebles.
Dimly and faint they croon, blue violins.
“Suffer without regret,” they seem to cry,
“Though dark your suffering is, it may be music,
Waves of blue heat that wash midsummer sky;
Sea-violins that play along the sands.”