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…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
Orrick Johns
Poet B
Louis Untermeyer
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 70%
Poems 83%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the sprawling landscape of twentieth-century American letters, few figures cast as long or as peculiar a shadow as Louis Untermeyer. Born on October 1, 1885, in New York City, and dying ninety-two years later on December 18, 1977, in Newtown, Connecticut, Untermeyer occupied a unique position in American cultural life. He was not primarily remembered as a great poet himself, though he published volumes of verse. H…
“It is the non-conformers, the innovators in art, science, technology, and human relations who, misunderstood and ridiculed in their own times, have shaped our world.”
In time
Orrick Johns
Louis Untermeyer
1885
1977
They overlapped for 60 years (1887–1946).
When Orrick Johns was born, Louis Untermeyer was about 2.
Louis Untermeyer was about 61 when Orrick Johns died.
On the map
About 961 km separate Sturgis, Michigan, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
t.s. eliot
ezra pound
Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition. Louis Untermeyer: new york city, newtown, connecticut, modern american poetry, harriet monroe, ezra pound, t.s. eliot, carl sandburg, robert frost.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Orrick Johns
Louis Untermeyer
Emotional landscapes
Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Louis Untermeyer: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.