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.
Matsuo Bashō
Sir George Etherege
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Matsuo Bashō, born in 1644 and dead on 28 November 1694, occupies a singular place in Japanese literature: he was at once a professional poet, teacher, traveler, theorist, editor, correspondent, and restless seeker after a way of seeing. His name is now inseparable from haiku, although the compact poems for which he is famous were called hokku in his own lifetime and originally functioned as opening verses for collab…
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.”
Sir George Etherege (c. 1635/1636 – c. May 10, 1692) stands as a pivotal figure in English literary history, the elegant architect of the Restoration comedy of manners. With his razor-sharp wit, keen eye for the absurdities of fashionable society, and graceful prose that captured the sparkling surface of aristocratic life, Etherege helped define an era of theatrical rebirth after the Puritan suppression of the stage.…
About 9,571 km separate Ueno, Mie Prefecture, Japan from Maidenhead, Berkshire, 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.
Matsuo Bashō: ueno, iga province, tokugawa shogunate, tōdō yoshitada, kai ōi, minashiguri, haikai, haibun. Sir George Etherege: maidenhead, berkshire, charles ii, the comical revenge, she would if she could, the man of mode, sir charles sedley, earl of rochester.
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.
Matsuo Bashō: Peace, Wonder, Spirituality. Sir George Etherege: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality.
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