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.
Emma Lazarus
Amy Lowell
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849 and died there on 19 November 1887, only thirty-eight years later. Her name is now inseparable from “The New Colossus,” the sonnet whose plea for the world’s “tired,” “poor,” and “huddled masses” has become the verbal companion to the Statue of Liberty. Yet the familiarity of those lines has often obscured the larger achievement of the woman who wrote them. Lazar…
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
Amy Lawrence Lowell emerged from the staid drawing rooms of Boston's Brahmin society to become one of the most controversial and influential poets of early twentieth-century America. Born on February 9, 1874, into one of New England's most distinguished families, she would spend her fifty-one years challenging literary conventions, championing new poetic forms, and leaving an indelible mark on American literature. He…
“Men under stress of emotion tend to talk in a rhythmed speech.”
About 306 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, 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.
Emma Lazarus: new york city, the new colossus, moses lazarus, esther nathan, admetus and other poems, alide: an episode of goethe’s life, the spagnoletto, william cullen bryant. Amy Lowell: boston, imagist movement, ada dwyer russell, sword blades and poppy seed, patterns, the taxi, can grande's castle, tendencies in modern american poetry.
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.
Emma Lazarus: Longing, Spirituality, Wonder. Amy Lowell: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.
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