Robert Williams Parry, known in literature as R. Williams Parry, was born on 6 March 1884 at Talysarn in the Nantlle Valley of Caernarfonshire, north-west Wales, and died on 4 January 1956. He became one of the most admired Welsh-language poets of the twentieth century, though he was never a prolific author in the ordinary commercial sense. His reputation rests instead upon a relatively small body of exceptionally fi…
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
R. Williams Parry
Poet B
José María Iparraguirre
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.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 65%
Blended 65%
Swap sides
Another related pair
José María Iparraguirre Balerdi was born on 12 August 1820 in Urretxu, Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country, and died on 6 April 1881 in Itsaso, near his native district. He occupies an unusual and enduring place in Basque cultural history: he was at once a poet, singer, guitarist, wandering performer, Carlist veteran, exile, emigrant, and popular symbol. His fame rests above all on “Gernikako Arbola” (“The Tree of Gernik…
“God forbid that any bloody struggle should come to darken our picturesque mountains with mourning; let every good Spaniard refrain from taking up arms, whether in the Carlist or the republican cause.”
In time
R. Williams Parry
José María Iparraguirre
1820
1956
Their lives did not overlap.
3 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 1,105 km separate Talysarn, Gwynedd, Wales from Urretxu, Gipuzkoa, Spain. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
R. Williams Parry
José María Iparraguirre
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
R. Williams Parry: talysarn, nantlle valley, yr haf a cherddi eraill, the summer and other poems, y llwynog, the fox, cynghanedd, welsh-language poetry. José María Iparraguirre: urretxu, gipuzkoa, gerniko arbola, first carlist war, catholic traditionalism, exile, emigrant, paris.
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
R. Williams Parry
José María Iparraguirre
1854
Exile in France
Emotional landscapes
R. Williams Parry: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. José María Iparraguirre: Spirituality, Joy, Peace.