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.
Christopher Smart
Alexander Pope
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Christopher Smart was born on 11 April 1722 at Fairlawne, the estate near Shipbourne in Kent where his father, Peter Smart, worked as steward to the Vane family. He died on 21 May 1771, not 1770 as has sometimes been reported, in London after a life marked by extraordinary accomplishment, recurrent distress, financial insecurity, and long periods of confinement. Few English poets of the eighteenth century have seemed…
“For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.”
Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…
“True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making every body about one as easy as we can.”
About 40 km separate Shipbourne, Kent, England from Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Christopher Smart: fairlawne, shipbourne, peter smart, winifred griffiths smart, durham school, pembroke college, john newbery, mrs. mary midnight. Alexander Pope: augustan age, heroic couplet, an essay on criticism, the rape of the lock, twickenham, john dryden, scriblerus club, spinal tuberculosis.
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.
Christopher Smart: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy. Alexander Pope: Joy, Peace, Wonder.
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