Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/62

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

The island is to be congratulated on having at last obtained a laureate who declines to treat himself as an institution.

Let us completely forget for a moment the fact that Mr. Fletcher is one of the Imagists—rhere has been lately so much idle controversy on the subject—and consider him simply as a poet.

His most marked personal characteristic is an extreme sensitiveness to impressions. He gives us the sense of nature—not a description; the thrill of trees in the wind, of boats under sail, or steamers plunging through heavy seas, "like black, plunging dolphins with red bellies"; of shifting wrinkled sand-dunes; or "the mad ballet of the summer sky." His is not the art of the symbolist, although it is largely impressionistic. In intention it is as far removed from the school of descriptive landscape poets as a Japanese painting is from a Hudson River primitive. His method is closely allied to music, not only in verse form, but in sub-