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.
Wallace Stevens stands as one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in American poetry—a philosophical poet who balanced a successful corporate career with the creation of some of the most intellectually challenging and aesthetically innovative verse of the 20th century. His poetry, characterized by its luxuriant language, philosophical depth, and preoccupation with the imagination's relationship to reality, cont…
“To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Howard Phelps Putnam was born in 1894 in Allston, Massachusetts, then a distinctly suburban and semi-rural part of Boston, and died on July 3, 1948, in Jamaica Plain. He belonged to the generation of American writers formed between the confident cultural inheritance of the nineteenth century and the disillusioning modernity of the First World War. His reputation never became as large as those of several Yale contempo…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Wallace Stevens was about 15.
Wallace Stevens was about 69 when Howard Phelps Putnam died.
Wallace Stevens:
reading, pennsylvania, harvard university, george santayana, harmonium, sunday morning, the emperor of ice-cream, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, the snow man.
Howard Phelps Putnam:
allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
