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.
Robert Nichols
Edward Shanks
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 early twentieth-century British poetry, certain voices echo through the decades with enduring resonance, while others fade into the margins of literary history despite their once-prominent positions. Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols belongs to this latter category—a poet whose name once commanded respect in literary circles, whose work appeared alongside that of his more famous contemporaries, yet whos…
“War doesn't ennoble: it degrades.”
On a summer day in June 1892, in the bustling heart of London, Edward Richard Buxton Shanks entered a world on the cusp of profound transformation. Born on June 11th into a comfortable middle-class family, the infant who would become one of the first recipients of Britain's most prestigious literary honor could hardly have imagined the tumultuous century that awaited him. His life would span two world wars, witness t…
About 122 km separate Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Robert Nichols: shanklin, isle of wight, john bowyer buchanan nichols, mary catherine nichols, invocation: war poems and others, aurelia and other poems, w.b. yeats, georgian poets. Edward Shanks: london, trinity college, georgian poetry movement, edward marsh, the queen of china, hawthornden prize, the old indispensables, the people of the ruins.
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.
Robert Nichols: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Edward Shanks: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.
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