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
William Hughes Mearns
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…
“To be partners in a sacred memory is a divine bond.”
William Hughes Mearns entered the world on September 28, 1875, in the bustling streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of James H. Mearns and Lelia Cora Evans. From his very first breaths in that vibrant Quaker City, young William—soon to be known simply as Hughes Mearns—seemed destined to bridge the realms of imagination and instruction. He would grow into a man who taught the world not merely how to write, b…
“The difficulty with writing a play is not in writing it, but in getting it produced.”
About 5,552 km separate Birmingham, England from Camden, New Jersey, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
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. William Hughes Mearns: philadelphia, bearsville, the pedagogue, harvard university, john dewey, creative youth, u.s. army medical corps, the little man who wasn't there.
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. William Hughes Mearns: Irony, Wonder, Fear.
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