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.
Emily Dickinson
Phillis Wheatley
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
In the autumn of 1773, a slender volume of poetry emerged from a London printing house that would forever alter the landscape of American literature. "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" bore the name of its author on the title page: Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston. This seemingly simple attribution concealed a profound paradox that would define both the poet's life and her…
“It is not impossible that some of the most learned and polished nations of the world may be found to have sprung from Africa.”
About 6,329 km separate Amherst, Massachusetts, USA from Senegal or Gambia, West Africa. Both have ground in Massachusetts.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war. Phillis Wheatley: boston, west africa, john wheatley, susanna wheatley, george whitefield, to his excellency general washington, poems on various subjects, neoclassical verse.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing. Phillis Wheatley: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace.
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