Books with author Vachel Lindsay

"Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty" by Vachel Lindsay. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

"Has more beauty and tenderness and jolly tears than all the expensive sob stuff theatrical managers ever dreamed of. Mr. Lindsay doesn't need to write verse to be a poet. His prose is poetry - poetry straight from the soil, of America that is, and of a nobler America that is to be. You cannot afford - both for your entertainment and for the real idea that this young man has (of which we have said nothing) - to miss this book." -Collier's Weekly "Mr. Vachel Lindsay is the most joyous of literary tramps....He not only had a good time himself but was a welcome guest in the homes of many penniless but self-respecting mountaineers, and more than paid for his lodging by poem and story and music." -New Outlook "A walk which was particularly unique because it was made for the most part without baggage, and penniless. Sometimes, in exchange for board and lodging, this 'poet tramp' helped with the harvest, or did other tasks around house or farm; sometimes he traded rhymes for bread, like the minstrels of old. He was on friendly terms with everybody and everything - farmers, villagers, dogs, children, grasshoppers and flowers - except for an occasional farmer whose thoughts turned to skepticism rather than hospitality. The adventures are simply told, with much informal philosophy and comment, interspersed with blank verse and rhyme - the former having something of the blunt, Whitman quality that does not disdain even the commonest things as subjects for inspiration." -The Craftsman "He was the Evangelist of Beauty, preaching his gospel everywhere by reciting his verses." -The Bookman "The colloquial style of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay's 'Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty,' the diary of a summer's foot-journey from Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, suits the easy content. The book has a sociological interest, and if it procures many readers the author will have served his purpose less by his preaching than by the report he gives of social and cultural deficiencies in the rural West. But its main appeal is as a narrative in the Borrovian manner....The chapters on Kansas harvesting, dealing with the twelve-hour daily struggle against burning heat, fatigue, and thirst, have vivid episodes...express something of the panoramic splendor of the season on the plains." -The Nation "It gives, in prose, the story of his recent walk through the West as a harvest-hand, reciting for the farmers." -The Forum "An account of the author's trip from his home town, Springfield, Ill., through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, to spread what he calls his 'Gospel of Beauty.'" -Country Life "Being the personal experiences of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay." -The American Review of Reviews

Excerpt from The Golden Book of SpringfieldUltra modern followers of Campbell hang in their libraries with unlimited pride a cer tain Rembrandtesque lithograph of the great man, an heirloom that is now quite rare, and to be classed in its southern way, as the spin ning wheels and old Bibles of the Mayflower are classed in a northern way. This lithograph is the enlargement of the engraving in the front of the Richardson biography, but much color and magic have been added. Out of the darkness emerges a smooth-shaven, high bred, masterful physiognomy more like that of the statesmen who were the fathers of the repub lic, than of a member of any priesthood. Campbell's cheeks and eyes are still fired with youth and authority militant. He has a head bowed with thought, crowned with grey hair, and beneath his chin is the, most states manlike of cravats, with a peculiarly old fashioned roll. Thus he must have looked.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was the most intensely romantic US poet of his generation. Less well known is the fact that Lindsay was also a radical critic of the white supremacy, greed, misery, brutality, ugliness and emptiness inherent in US capitalist culture. His only novel, The Golden Book - now back in print after over 80 years of shameful neglect - is a relentless dreamer's all-out assault on the stupidity and bigotry of Main Street USA. Linsay's Luciferian lyricism, incantatory and even shamanic; the carnivalesque enthusiasm and humor that he called the 'higher vaudeville'; and of course that zany, jubilant, self-contradictory mysticism that was all his own are amply evident in this radically nonconformist dram of the future. In The Golden Book, the coffee houses, movie theaters, streets and parks of Springfield in the 'Mystic Year' 2018 are the setting for a valiant struggle to transform a village dominated by shady politicians, lynch-mobs, commercialism and cocaine into a new paradise. Ron Sakolsky's superb introduction, the most detailed examination yet of Lindsay's 'Johnny Appleseed utopianism', explores The Golden Book as a radical response to the Springfield Race Riot of 1908; relates the book to the utopias of Fourier, Ruskin, Bellamy, and others; and traces Lindsay's involvement in Chicago radicalism in the 1910s, as well as his affinities with anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, the IWW, and such poet radicals as Blake, Lautreamont, the surrealists, Langston Hughes and the Beats.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Excerpt from The Golden Book of Springfield Ultra modern followers of Campbell hang in their libraries with unlimited pride a cer tain Rembrandtesque lithograph of the great man, an heirloom that is now quite rare, and to be classed in its southern way, as the spin ning wheels and old Bibles of the Mayflower are classed in a northern way. This lithograph is the enlargement of the engraving in the front of the Richardson biography, but much color and magic have been added. Out of the darkness emerges a smooth-shaven, high bred, masterful physiognomy more like that of the statesmen who were the fathers of the repub lic, than of a member of any priesthood. Campbell's cheeks and eyes are still fired with youth and authority militant. He has a head bowed with thought, crowned with grey hair, and beneath his chin is the, most states manlike of cravats, with a peculiarly old fashioned roll. Thus he must have looked. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

When 'Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay, was, quite appropriately, one of its first discoveries. It may be not quite without significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor. For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great event of the approaching era, and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali laureate garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric message of this newer world.

Li this, our town, we call New Springfield, David Carson, a young minister of the Disciples of Christ is a near neighbor of mine. He is a graduate of Bethany College. His great-grandfather studied there before him, when Alexander Campbell, the founder of Bethany, was in his prime. If you want to know of this man as we know him, read Richardson sstaid old biography, or walk the shades of Bethany, West Virginia. Campbell, in our eyes, was the American pioneer theologian. He was devoted to the union of the churches of Christendom. He pleaded that all disciples of Christ call themselves simply Christians, and unite on those symbols and ordinances which Christendom has in common. If it would not make our great-grandfathers turn over in their graves, I and my neighbor would call ourselves simply Campbellites. We would do it for a human, and not lofty reason.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at