Arkansas

John Gould Fletcher (January 3, 1886 -May 10, 1950) was an Imagist poet (the first Southern poet to win the Pulitzer Prize), author and authority on modern painting. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he show more dropped out shortly after his father's death. Fletcher's poetic works included: The Black Rock (1928), Selected Poems (1938), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1939, South Star (1941), and The Burning Mountain (1946). In 1937 he wrote his autobiography, Life is My Song, and in 1947 he published Arkansas, a history of his home state. Fletcher suffered from depression, and on May 20, 1950, he committed suicide by drowning himself in a pond near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas. Fletcher is buried at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock. A branch of the Central Arkansas Library System is named in his honor. (Bowker Author Biography) show less