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.
Grace Hazard Conkling
Emily Dickinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Grace Hazard Conkling, born Grace Walcott Hazard in New York City on 7 February 1878, belonged to a generation of American women whose intellectual ambitions were increasingly supported by women’s colleges, international study, and new professional opportunities, even as marriage and motherhood still imposed demanding social expectations. She became a poet, teacher, musician, critic of children’s reading, and a forma…
“Books, the first books heard or read, are not about life; they are life.”
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
About 222 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in Massachusetts.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Grace Hazard Conkling: new york city, smith college, hilda conkling, symphony of a mexican garden, wilderness songs, roscoe platt conkling, tampico, charles-marie widor. Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war.
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.
Grace Hazard Conkling: Wonder, Sensuality, Longing. Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.
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