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.
Edmund Waller
James Shirley
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and died on 21 October 1687 at Beaconsfield. His long life carried him through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, and the opening years of James II’s rule. Few English poets lived so visibly amid such violent political reversals, and fewer still man…
“Poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth.”
James Shirley, born in September 1596 and buried on 29 October 1666, was the last major dramatist of England’s long Renaissance theatrical age. His life extended from the final years of Elizabeth I through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the civil wars, the Puritan Commonwealth, and the first years of the Restoration. That span placed him at the center of extraordinary transformations in English religion, politi…
“Poetry is the child of nature, which, regulated and made beautiful by art, presenteth the most harmonious of all other compositions; among which (if we rightly consider) the dramatical is the most absolute.”
About 38 km separate Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Edmund Waller: coleshill, beaconsfield, james i, charles i, civil wars, commonwealth, restoration, lady dorothy sidney. James Shirley: london, merchant taylors' school, st john's college, william laud, the triumph of peace, hyde park, the ball, the lady of pleasure.
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.
Edmund Waller: Longing, Tenderness, Peace. James Shirley: Sorrow, Irony, Despair.
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