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.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Witter Bynner
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was born on 8 December 1832 in Kvikne, a mountain district in what is now Innlandet, Norway, and died on 26 April 1910 in Paris. During his long life he became, by turns and often simultaneously, a novelist, poet, dramatist, editor, theatre director, lecturer, political agitator, public moralist, farmer, husband, father, and international advocate for national self-determination. Few w…
“The greatest of all arts is the art of living together.”
Harold Witter Bynner, who published almost always as Witter Bynner and was known to friends as “Hal,” was born on 10 August 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 1 June 1968 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His long career carried him through several distinct literary eras: the cultivated, metrically formal verse of the early twentieth century; the disruptions and provocations of modernism; the American enthusiasm for Asia…
“I have come by accident into as close touch with Chinese poetry as a westerner is able to come without a knowledge of the Chinese tongue.”
About 5,796 km separate Kvikne, Norway from Brooklyn, New York, USA. 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.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: kvikne, ja, vi elsker dette landet, synnøve solbakken, four greats, karoline reimers, norwegian theatre, mellem slagene, sigurd slembe. Witter Bynner: brooklyn, santa fe, harvard university, young harvard, grenstone poems, spectrism, emanuel morgan, kiang kang-hu.
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.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Witter Bynner: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.
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