Compare Poets

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.

Poet A

Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Poet B

Max Ehrmann Max Ehrmann
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66% Poems 88% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 – 30 October 1919 (~69)
22 live poems · English

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on 5 November 1850 in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, a rural community whose fields, seasons, family routines, and wide horizons remained central to her imaginative life. She died on 30 October 1919 at her home in Short Beach, Connecticut, only days before her sixty-ninth birthday. Between those dates she became one of the most widely read poets in the United States. Her name was known in p…

“By and by the troubles will lessen, and you will find yourself master of Circumstances.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872 – 9 September 1945 (~73)
2 live poems · English

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…

“Let me drive out of myself the universal madness to be elsewhere in search of the joy of life, for the joy of life resides within oneself.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace

In time

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Max Ehrmann
1850 1945
They overlapped for 48 years (1872–1919). When Max Ehrmann was born, Ella Wheeler Wilcox was about 22. Max Ehrmann was about 47 when Ella Wheeler Wilcox died.

On the map

About 378 km separate Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, USA from Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: johnstown center, short beach, solitude, poems of passion, robert m. wilcox, positive thinking, the voice of the voiceless, women's suffrage. Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

Earnestness
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
82% life
Compare
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
Let me Lean Hard
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
77% self
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Time and Love
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
77% love
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Desolation
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
77% love
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Existence
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
76%
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Friendship After Love
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
76% love
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Max Ehrmann: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace.

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