After watching Martin Eden, a film of a semi-autobiographical Jack London novel, I became curious about the man referred to as his mentor, George Sterling (Russ Brissenden in Martin Eden). All the books published in Sterling’s lifetime are out of copyright; this was the only one I could find for free.
The House of Orchids, and Other Poems, published 1911, was Sterling’s third collection. It contains forty-six poems, written in a late romantic style, tinged with gothic and fantasy elements. The diction is self-consciously poetic; why say “reward” if there’s an archaic synonym like “guerdon” to use in its place?
Most are set at dawn or dusk, some in the night; I recall one set at mid-day. Stars and flowers abound, and fellow humans are scarce. The sea is a recurring image—fitting for Sterling’s role in a budding artist’s colony at Carmel.
His parents had destined him for the priesthood, but he dropped out. A vestige of this is reflected in “At the Grave of Serra.” For the most part, Sterling’s musings centered on a vaguer transcendence; their muddled inchoate intimations me cold. To my taste, the more concrete the poem, the better I liked it. “Ephemeral,” “Remorse,” and “Moonlight in the Pines” are some of those.
A literary critic in 1940 characterized Sterling as “a belated romantic, gained some prominence in a period when American poetry was at an ebb. The tide rose after 1912; Sterling failed to develop and was engulfed.” On the evidence of this collection, I have no reason to quibble with this assessment. ( )