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.
Abu Nuwas
Thomas Nashe
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Abu Nuwas, whose full name was al-Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami and whose life is generally dated from about 756 to about 814, occupies a singular position in the history of Arabic poetry. Few poets have been so admired for verbal brilliance, so censured for moral provocation, so repeatedly transformed into legend, and so difficult to confine within a single image. He is remembered above all as the great poet of wine, urb…
“Generosity of spirit counts for far more than generosity of coin.”
Thomas Nashe, baptized on 26 November 1567 and probably born shortly before that date in Lowestoft, Suffolk, was one of the most brilliant, abrasive, inventive, and precarious figures of the English Renaissance. He died sometime after 1599 and is conventionally assigned a death date of about 1601, though the circumstances and exact date remain unknown. In a life that appears to have lasted little more than three deca…
“Our learning ought to be our lives' amendment, and the fruits of our private study ought to appear in our public behavior.”
About 4,432 km separate Ahvaz, Iran from Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. 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.
Abu Nuwas: ahvaz, basra, baghdad, harun al-rashid, muhammad al-amin, waliba ibn al-hubab, khamriyyat, ghazal. Thomas Nashe: lowestoft, william nashe, janet nashe, the anatomy of absurdity, pierce penniless, a litany in time of plague, martin marprelate controversy, university wits.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Abu Nuwas: Sensuality, Joy, Longing. Thomas Nashe: Despair, Sorrow, Fear.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.