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.
Edgar A. Guest
J. C. Squire
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Edgar Albert Guest was born in Birmingham, England, on 20 August 1881, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 5 August 1959, fifteen days before his seventy-eighth birthday. During much of his long life, he was among the most familiar poets in the United States. His name appeared daily in newspapers, his verses were memorized in schools and recited at civic meetings, and his books sold in quantities that many more critica…
“But a home cannot be builded always on happiness.”
In the smoky literary salons of early twentieth-century London, few figures loomed larger than John Collings Squire, a man whose influence extended far beyond his own considerable poetic output to shape an entire generation of English letters. Born on April 2, 1884, in Plymouth, Devon, Squire would become one of the most powerful literary editors of his age, a respected poet in his own right, and a lightning rod for…
“The better production of our generation has been mainly lyrical and it has been widely diffused.”
About 273 km separate Birmingham, England from Plymouth, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.
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.
Edgar A. Guest: birmingham, detroit, people's poet, a heap o' livin', just folks, the path to home, it couldn't be done, nellie crossman. J. C. Squire: plymouth, blundell's school, st. john's college, the new statesman, solomon eagle, the three hills and other poems, poems and baudelaire flowers, to a bull-dog.
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.
Edgar A. Guest: Joy, Tenderness, Peace. J. C. Squire: Spirituality, Sorrow, Wonder.
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