How did poet Vachel Lindsay kill himself? July 24, 2020January 21, 2012 by Pamela Landy Poet Vachel Lindsay killed himself by drinking Lysol, in 1931 at age fifty-two. Related Answers Who was the model for Saul Bellow’s hard-drinking poet Von Humboldt Fleisher in his novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975)? How did poet Dylan Thomas die? To whose funeral in 1885 did Tennyson send a wreath inscribed “To the World’s Greatest Poet”? Did Paul Newman ride the bicycle himself in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)? When did George Reeves shoot himself? What epitaph did William Butler Yeats write for himself?