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.
Watcyn Wyn
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the rolling hills of Carmarthenshire, where the coal dust mingles with morning mist and the Welsh language flows like the streams that carve the valleys, a remarkable story unfolded in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is the story of Watkin Hezekiah Williams, better known by his bardic name Watcyn Wyn, whose journey from the depths of coal mines to the heights of Welsh literary achievement embodies th…
“It was a day for service, support and help.”
Lydia Huntley Sigourney, born Lydia Howard Huntley on 1 September 1791 in Norwich, Connecticut, became one of the most widely read, industrious, and culturally influential American writers of the nineteenth century. During the height of her career, her poems were printed in newspapers and magazines, memorized by schoolchildren, recited at funerals, quoted from pulpits, and displayed in family albums. She wrote for re…
“If there is any kitchen in Parnassus, my Muse has surely officiated there as a woman of all work, and an aproned waiter.”
About 5,109 km separate Ddolgam, Carmarthenshire, Wales from Norwich, Connecticut, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Watcyn Wyn: carmarthenshire, ddolgam, cwmgarw ganol, brynaman, mary jones, evan williams, j. j. copeland, gibea chapel. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: norwich, connecticut, sweet singer of hartford, moral pieces, traits of the aborigines of america, indian names, charles sigourney, daniel wadsworth.
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.
Watcyn Wyn: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality.
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