Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Carl Sandburg
Richard Henry Horne
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Carl Sandburg, born 6 January 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois, and dead 22 July 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, became one of the most recognizable American writers of the twentieth century: a poet of factories and prairies, a journalist of civic life, a collector and performer of folk songs, a novelist and children’s writer, and the immensely popular biographer of Abraham Lincoln. Few writers worked so deliberately t…
“Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.”
Richard Henry Horne entered the world in London on the last day of 1802 (though he himself, with characteristic contrariness, sometimes gave the date as New Year's Day 1803), the son of James Horne, a quarter-master in the 61st Regiment of Foot. His father's military postings took the family to Guernsey, where they lived until James Horne's death in 1810 left the boy fatherless at the age of seven or eight. The young…
“The price of the present edition is one farthing, in order to bring it within the reach of the million.”
About 6,591 km separate Galesburg, Illinois, USA from London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Carl Sandburg: galesburg, flat rock, abraham lincoln, chicago, lillian steichen, chicago poems, cornhuskers, smoke and steel. Richard Henry Horne: london, guernsey, royal military college, orion, hecatompylos, elizabeth barrett browning, william howitt, cosmo de' medici.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Carl Sandburg: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. Richard Henry Horne: Wonder, Peace, Joy.
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