SOURCE: "The Unforgetting of Vachel Lindsay," in South-west Review, Vol. XL VII, No. 4, Autumn, 1962, pp. 294-302.

In the following essay, Trombly provides a thematic and stylistic overview of Lindsay's work.

During the early 1920's Vachel Lindsay was undoubtedly the most widely known and popular of contemporary American poets. Tens of thousands of people in the United States, Canada, and England had heard him recite his poems and had applauded lustily. Although he was only fifty-two when he died, he lived to see health and creative powers fail him, his popularity wane, his kind of poetry superseded by another. Now, a generation later, it may be well to reappraise his contribution.

Lindsay was already thirty-three years old when, in 1912, he wrote "General William Booth Enters into Heaven," the poem that won him a hearing and launched him on his colorful and brief career. At that moment he had been...