JOHNSWOOD

A reconciliation with death is reached through the memories of a life shared in which the home (Johnswood) they built together in a pine woods in Arkansas had a particular meaning for them both. And this memoir, which is personal and sensitive, is also a tribute to her husband, the poet, John Gould Fletcher, much of whose work is included here in context with his life. His many moods and interests and recurrent restlessness which took them for an unsatisfactory year away from Johnswood and presaged the breakdown (he was presumably a depressive) which followed; their very different childhoods but similar tastes; their writing; the war years- and a summer at the McDowell colony; all this leads to the first few days of a last breakdown and the fulfillment of a premonition in which he took his life..... A quiet, fragmentary, and sentimental testament which has a particular interest for this poet's following.