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.
Joaquin Miller
James Russell 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.
Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller on September 8, 1837, and dead on February 17, 1913, lived a life that seemed designed to invite legend. He was a poet, journalist, lawyer, teacher, dramatist, lecturer, rancher, and relentless self-inventor. To admirers in the nineteenth century, he was the “Poet of the Sierras,” a bard who had given the American West its own grand, romantic voice. To skeptics, he was an…
“That which is best in my works was inspired by her.”
In the pantheon of American letters, few figures cast as long or complex a shadow as James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poet, critic, editor, diplomat, and professor, Lowell embodied the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century New England with a breadth that few of his contemporaries could match. His life spanned the tumultuous decades from the early republic through the Gilded Age, and his voice—whether wielding t…
“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
About 1,280 km separate Indiana, 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.
Joaquin Miller: poet of the sierras, oregon territory, life amongst the modocs, kit carson's ride, songs of the sierras, songs of the sun-lands, theresa dyer, abigail leland. James Russell Lowell: boston, harvard college, the biglow papers, poems, the present crisis, maria white, william wetmore story, abolitionism.
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.
Joaquin Miller: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. James Russell Lowell: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.
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