SOURCE: "Vachel Lindsay," in American Poetry Since 1900, Henry Holt and Company, 1923, pp. 88-112.

In the following essay, Untermeyer, a poet and editor, derides the jingoistic and burlesque qualities of Lindsay's verse.

Two impulses dominate The Golden Whales of California (The Macmillan Company, 1920); two tendencies that are almost opposed in mood and treatment. Sometimes the Jerusalem theme is uppermost; sometimes the jazz orchestrations drown everything else. Frequently, in the more successful pieces, there is a ragtime blend of both. But a half-ethical, half-æsthetic indecision, an inability to choose between what most delights Lindsay and what his hearers prefer is the outstanding effect—and defect—of this collection. Lindsay, the grotesque entertainer, he of the moaning saxophone and the squawking clarinet, is continually disturbing—and being disturbed by—Lindsay the mystic, the cross-roads missionary.

Had Lindsay been let alone, he would undoubtedly have developed the romantically religious strain so...