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.
Charles Sorley
Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 19 May 1895, and was killed in France on 13 October 1915, not yet twenty-one years old. His literary life lasted only a few years, and his published body of verse was small, much of it assembled after his death. Yet he occupies a singular place among the poets of the First World War. Unlike writers whose work became famous through prolonged service, later dis…
“The war is a great thing, but it is not the greatest thing.”
In the shadowed corridors of early twentieth-century American literature, where the voices of African American poets were just beginning to echo with unprecedented force, Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. stands as a luminous yet fleeting figure—a young man whose brief span of years belied the depth of his insight and the innovative spark of his artistry. Born on September 2, 1895, in Louisville, Kentucky, and passing away on…
About 6,166 km separate Aberdeen, Scotland from Louisville, Kentucky, 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.
Charles Sorley: aberdeen, first world war, william ritchie sorley, robert graves, to germany, when you see millions of the mouthless dead, marlborough college, university college oxford. Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.: louisville kentucky, tuberculosis, the band of gideon and other lyrics, on the fields of france, florence olivia, fisk university, harlem renaissance, joseph seamon cotter sr..
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.
Charles Sorley: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr.: Spirituality, Wonder, Anger.
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