Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America was published by Scribner in 1935. The biography tells the story of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) — the Springfield, Illinois, poet who became famous in the 1910s for his vividly performative verse (“The Congo,” “General William Booth Enters into Heaven,” “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”) and who died by drinking Lysol in his family home at age fifty-two.
Masters was well positioned to write this biography: both men were Illinois poets who achieved sudden fame in the 1910s and whose subsequent careers were marked by declining reputation and personal unhappiness. Masters understood Lindsay’s situation from inside — the American literary culture that celebrates novelty, tires quickly of what it has celebrated, and offers no sustainable livelihood to poets who are no longer fashionable.
The biography traces Lindsay’s extraordinary career arc: his decision to walk across America trading poems for food (the “tramping” expeditions of 1906 and 1912), his sudden fame after performing “The Congo” for Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine audience in 1913, his years of exhausting lecture tours that consumed his creative energy, his unhappy late marriage, and his final breakdown.
Masters’s interpretation emphasizes the destructive relationship between the American poet and the American public: Lindsay was used up by a culture that wanted entertainment rather than art, that demanded performance rather than contemplation, and that discarded him when his novelty faded.
Collecting Vachel Lindsay
First edition (Scribner, New York, 1935): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Very good/very good: $10–$30