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.
Joyce Kilmer
Max Ehrmann
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on 6 December 1886 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, into a household in which intellectual seriousness and artistic feeling were not opposites but companion forces. His father, Frederick Barnett Kilmer, was a physician, analytical chemist, and later a leading scientific figure at Johnson & Johnson; his work helped establish standards for pharmaceutical and consumer-health products in an era…
“The Catholic Church is the only thing that makes life worth living.”
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…
About 1,110 km separate New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA from Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Joyce Kilmer: new brunswick, new jersey, aline murray, trees, roman catholicism, poetry society of america, columbia university, summer of love. Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius.
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.
Joyce Kilmer: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. Max Ehrmann: Peace, Spirituality, Joy.
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