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
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
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…
“Christmas is over and Business is Business.”
Winthrop Mackworth Praed was born in London on 28 July 1802 and died there on 15 July 1839, only thirteen days short of his thirty-seventh birthday. His short life encompassed several identities that Victorian readers often preferred to keep distinct: he was a gifted schoolboy journalist, a prize-winning Cambridge classicist, a lawyer, a Conservative politician, a public speaker of exceptional brilliance, and one of…
“I should certainly refuse to occupy any post in which I should be expected to place myself in personal collision with any man.”
About 6,115 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from Tregony, Cornwall, England. 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.
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. Winthrop Mackworth Praed: london, winthrop family, the etonian, good night to the season, the belle of the ball-room, trinity college, sir william browne medals, thomas babington macaulay.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Franklin P. Adams: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Winthrop Mackworth Praed: Sorrow, Longing, Peace.
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