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.
Ben Jonson
Richard Rowlands
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Ben Jonson, baptized on 11 June 1572 and probably born on or very near that date, entered the world in Westminster at a moment when London’s theatrical culture was beginning to assume the force and richness that would make the English Renaissance famous. He died on 6 August 1637, having become, in the course of sixty-five turbulent years, England’s most formidable classical dramatist, one of its finest lyric poets, a…
“Words are the only things that live forever.”
Richard Rowlands, better known to history as Richard Verstegan or Verstegen, was born in London about 1550 and died in Antwerp in 1640. He belongs to that unusually rich category of Renaissance figures whose lives resist simple professional labels. He was a poet, translator, engraver, publisher, controversialist, antiquary, journalist, intelligence agent, and committed Catholic exile. He wrote in English, Latin, Dutc…
“Holland is as fertile in sects as Italy is in mushrooms: new doctrines sprout overnight from the dreams of men.”
About 13 km separate Westminster, London, England from East London, England. Both have ground in London.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Ben Jonson: westminster, william camden, on my first son, on my first daughter, every man in his humour, the isle of dogs, gabriel spencer, war of the theatres. Richard Rowlands: london, antwerp, edmund campion, theatrum crudelitatum, catholic exile, christ church oxford, goldsmiths' company, william allen.
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.
Ben Jonson: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Richard Rowlands: Tenderness, Joy, Peace.
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