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.
Franklin P. Adams
James Russell Lowell
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Franklin Pierce Adams, known almost everywhere in print by the compact and memorable signature “F. P. A.,” was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 15 November 1881, and died in New York City on 23 March 1960. During the first half of the twentieth century, he became one of America’s most recognizable newspaper humorists, a poet of urbane light verse, an editor, anthologist, critic, and central presence in the literary soci…
“To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.”
In the pantheon of American letters, few figures cast as long or complex a shadow as James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poet, critic, editor, diplomat, and professor, Lowell embodied the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century New England with a breadth that few of his contemporaries could match. His life spanned the tumultuous decades from the early republic through the Gilded Age, and his voice—whether wielding t…
“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”
About 1,365 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.
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.
Franklin P. Adams: chicago, new york city, f. p. a., baseball's sad lexicon, the conning tower, algonquin round table, in cupid's court, tobogganing on parnassus. James Russell Lowell: boston, harvard college, the biglow papers, poems, the present crisis, maria white, william wetmore story, abolitionism.
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.
Franklin P. Adams: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. James Russell Lowell: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.
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