Compare Poets

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.

Poet A

Patrick Reginald Chalmers Patrick Reginald Chalmers

Poet B

Witter Bynner Witter Bynner
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66% Poems 87% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Patrick Reginald Chalmers

Patrick Reginald Chalmers

27 June 1872 – 12 September 1942 (~70)
15 live poems · English

Patrick Reginald Chalmers was born on 27 June 1872 at Brechin, Angus, Scotland, and died on 12 September 1942. He belonged to that substantial but now less frequently discussed group of early twentieth-century British writers whose literary lives flourished outside the most conspicuous movements of their age. Chalmers was neither an avant-garde modernist nor a public prophet of national importance. He did not seek to…

“Now where Obscurity is, is also Curiosity. And Curiosity begets Rumour and Romance.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Peace
Witter Bynner

Witter Bynner

10 August 1881 – 1 June 1968 (~87)
4 live poems · English

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…

“The sense of poetry as a natural and solacing part of life has lasted among the Chinese people.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality

In time

Patrick Reginald Chalmers
Witter Bynner
1872 1968
They overlapped for 62 years (1881–1942). When Witter Bynner was born, Patrick Reginald Chalmers was about 9. Witter Bynner was about 61 when Patrick Reginald Chalmers died.

On the map

About 5,257 km separate Brechin, Angus, Scotland from Brooklyn, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

social landscape

Patrick Reginald Chalmers: brechin, angus, green days and blue days, a picker of pebbles, punch and judy, at the tail of the weir, the obsessive angler, rugby school. Witter Bynner: brooklyn, santa fe, harvard university, young harvard, grenstone poems, spectrism, emanuel morgan, kiang kang-hu.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

The Lass I Love
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
76% love
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Romance
Witter Bynner
Once, In the Dim Wood
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
73% world
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Ganymede
Witter Bynner
Once, In the Dim Wood
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
72% presence
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Romance
Witter Bynner
Once, In the Dim Wood
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
72% world
Compare
Sands
Witter Bynner
Once, In the Dim Wood
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
72%
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Foam
Witter Bynner
Spring Salmon
Patrick Reginald Chalmers
72% spring, world, desire
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Ganymede
Witter Bynner

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Patrick Reginald Chalmers: Wonder, Tenderness, Peace. Witter Bynner: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.

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