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
Alice Dunbar Nelson
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…
“To me a poem must be a picture.”
Alice Dunbar Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore on July 19, 1875, in the bustling, sun-drenched city of New Orleans, Louisiana, a place where the Mississippi River whispered stories of resilience and reinvention into the ears of its diverse inhabitants. She died on September 18, 1935, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of sixty, her heart finally succumbing to the strains of a life lived with fierce passion and…
“Willow trees are kind, Dear God. They will not bear a body on their limbs.”
About 1,206 km separate Indiana, USA from New Orleans, Louisiana, 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. Alice Dunbar Nelson: new orleans, philadelphia, paul laurence dunbar, violets and other tales, the goodness of st. rocque, the stones of the village, phillis wheatley club, national association of colored women.
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. Alice Dunbar Nelson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.
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