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
Thomas Flatman
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.”
Thomas Flatman was born on 21 February 1635 in London, probably in or near Aldersgate Street, though older accounts also associate his family with Red Cross Street. He died on 8 December 1688 in Three-leg Alley, in the parish of St. Bride’s, London, and was buried there. His name is not usually placed beside those of John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, or the Earl of Rochester, yet Flatman is an unusually revea…
About 46 km separate Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, England from Deptford, 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. Thomas Flatman: london, aldersgate street, three-leg alley, winchester college, new college oxford, royalist, anglican, poems and songs.
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. Thomas Flatman: Sorrow, Despair, Fear.
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