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.
Alfred Noyes
W. H. Davies
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alfred Noyes was born on 16 September 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and died on 25 June 1958 at his home on the Isle of Wight. During the first decades of the twentieth century he was among the best-known English poets in the world: a writer whose books sold widely, whose recitations drew large audiences, and whose poems entered schools, anthologies, music halls, and family memory. He was celebrated above all…
“A poem is a thought caught in a mood.”
William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…
“I cannot now read with enjoyment books that are borrowed or are likely to be wanted back.”
About 116 km separate Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England from Newport, Wales. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alfred Noyes: wolverhampton, isle of wight, the highwayman, garnett daniels, forty singing seamen, drake: an english epic, watchers of the sky, exeter college. W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp.
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.
Alfred Noyes: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness. W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.