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.
Nora Hopper Chesson
Bliss Carman
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Nora Hopper Chesson, born Nora Hopper on 2 January 1871 in Exeter, England, and dead on 14 April 1906, belongs to that compelling company of poets whose work has remained more vivid than their public reputation. Her life was brief, her published oeuvre relatively small, and the surviving record of her private circumstances incomplete. Yet the poems she left behind possess a distinctive pressure and atmosphere: they a…
“And why should not the bees and the cattle give thanks as well as we?”
William Bliss Carman, known throughout his literary life as Bliss Carman, was born on 15 April 1861 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and died on 8 June 1929 in New Canaan, Connecticut. For several decades around the turn of the twentieth century, he was among the most widely read poets associated with Canada. He enjoyed an international reputation unusual for a Canadian writer of his generation, published extensively i…
“The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”
About 4,551 km separate Exeter, Devon, England from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. 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.
Nora Hopper Chesson: exeter, irish literary revival, under quicken boughs, celtic legend, wilfrid hugh chesson, fin de siècle, decadence, folk revival. Bliss Carman: fredericton, new brunswick, low tide on grand pré, songs from vagabondia, richard hovey, sappho: one hundred lyrics, the joys of the road, mary perry king.
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.
Nora Hopper Chesson: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Bliss Carman: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace.
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