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.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Alfred Kreymborg
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was born on 8 December 1832 in Kvikne, a mountain district in what is now Innlandet, Norway, and died on 26 April 1910 in Paris. During his long life he became, by turns and often simultaneously, a novelist, poet, dramatist, editor, theatre director, lecturer, political agitator, public moralist, farmer, husband, father, and international advocate for national self-determination. Few w…
“Love is the first thing in the world, and it is also the last.”
In the early decades of the twentieth century, when American poetry was struggling to break free from the strictures of Victorian convention, a slight, chess-obsessed son of German immigrants emerged as one of the most influential figures in literary modernism. Alfred Kreymborg, born on December 10, 1883, in New York City, would become far more than a poet. He was a literary impresario, a talent scout with an uncanny…
“Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the people who really enjoy chess are the dubs and the duffers, experts who have resigned their ambitions, those who play only for pastime, and, of course, the great fraternity of the kibbitzers.”
About 5,796 km separate Kvikne, Norway from New York City, New York, USA. 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.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: kvikne, ja, vi elsker dette landet, synnøve solbakken, four greats, karoline reimers, norwegian theatre, mellem slagene, sigurd slembe. Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse.
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.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.
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