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.
Mark Twain
Bayard Taylor
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who became Mark Twain, was born on 30 November 1835 in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri, and died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Few American writers have occupied so many roles in the national imagination: printer, river pilot, prospector, newspaper correspondent, lecturer, novelist, travel writer, social critic, entrepreneur, public celebrity, and, in a less frequently emph…
“Classic. A book which people praise and don’t read.”
James Bayard Taylor was born on 11 January 1825 in Kennett Township, near Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died on 19 December 1878 in Berlin, Germany. During his lifetime he was among the most visible American men of letters: a poet, novelist, journalist, lecturer, travel writer, editor, translator, and, briefly, a diplomat. His fame was immense by the standards of his day. Audiences crowded his l…
“To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.”
About 1,375 km separate Florida, Missouri, USA from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 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.
Mark Twain: florida, missouri, redding, connecticut, halley's comet, olivia langdon, the adventures of tom sawyer, adventures of huckleberry finn, the gilded age, the celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county. Bayard Taylor: kennett township, chester county, ximena; or, the battle of the sierra morena, views a-foot, eldorado; or, adventures in the path of empire, the story of kennett, the bedouin song, quaker farming family.
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.
Mark Twain: Tenderness, Peace, Longing. Bayard Taylor: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality.
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