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
Arthur Davison Ficke
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
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…
“Poetry is a search for the inexplicable.”
Arthur Davison Ficke was born in Davenport, Iowa, on 10 November 1883, at a moment when the United States was rapidly becoming both an industrial power and a more self-conscious literary nation. He died on 30 November 1945, at the age of sixty-two, leaving a body of poetry that can seem difficult to classify neatly. He was at once a disciplined maker of sonnets, a cosmopolitan traveler, a student of Asian cultures, a…
“Art is the only passport that allows a person to travel into another's inner country.”
About 1,236 km separate Reading, Pennsylvania, USA from Davenport, Iowa, 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.
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. Arthur Davison Ficke: davenport, iowa, spectra hoax, witter bynner, anne knish, harvard university, the breaking of bonds, sonnets of a portrait-painter.
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.
Wallace Stevens: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow. Arthur Davison Ficke: Fear, Sorrow, Wonder.
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