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.
James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
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 pantheon of American letters, few figures cast as long or complex a shadow as James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poet, critic, editor, diplomat, and professor, Lowell embodied the intellectual ferment of nineteenth-century New England with a breadth that few of his contemporaries could match. His life spanned the tumultuous decades from the early republic through the Gilded Age, and his voice—whether wielding t…
“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”
John Greenleaf Whittier was born on 17 December 1807 on his family’s farm in the East Parish of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and died on 7 September 1892 in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. During his long life, the United States changed from a young republic into an industrial and continental power scarred by civil war, and Whittier became one of the most widely read literary witnesses to that transformation. He was a poe…
“Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart.”
About 47 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States. 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.
James Russell Lowell: boston, harvard college, the biglow papers, poems, the present crisis, maria white, william wetmore story, abolitionism. John Greenleaf Whittier: haverhill, new hampshire, william lloyd garrison, american anti-slavery society, quaker, legends of new england, poems written during the progress of the abolition question, ichabod.
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.
James Russell Lowell: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. John Greenleaf Whittier: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.
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