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.
Fiona Macleod
Orrick Johns
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Fiona Macleod, whose published life ran from 12 September 1855 to 12 December 1905, was the most celebrated and perplexing literary identity created by the Scottish writer William Sharp. To call Fiona merely Sharp’s pseudonym, though factually necessary, is insufficient. She was a sustained artistic persona, a voice with its own apparent temperament, correspondence, friendships, themes, and public reputation. Through…
“The silence of the hills is the voice of God.”
Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
About 5,771 km separate Paisley, Scotland from Sturgis, Michigan, USA. 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.
Fiona Macleod: scottish, celtic revival, pharais, the mountain lovers, the sin-eater, from the hills of dream, william sharp, bessie sharp. Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition.
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.
Fiona Macleod: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.
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