Compare Poets

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.

Poet A

Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Arlington Robinson

Poet B

Nixon Waterman Nixon Waterman
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71% Poems 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson

22 December 1869 – 6 April 1935 (~66)
10 live poems · English

Edwin Arlington Robinson stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in American poetry. Renowned for his psychologically nuanced portraits, precise craftsmanship, and unflinching explorations of the human condition, Robinson’s work bridges the 19th and 20th centuries, offering both the rigor of tradition and the insights of modernity. His journey from the small towns of Maine to the literary heights…

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Nixon Waterman

Nixon Waterman

12 November 1859 – 1 September 1944 (~85)
3 live poems · English

In the golden age of American newspaper poetry, when verses appeared on editorial pages alongside the day's news and readers clipped favorite stanzas to paste in scrapbooks, few voices resonated more warmly with the reading public than that of Nixon Waterman. Born on November 12, 1859, in the small prairie town of Newark, Illinois, Waterman would rise from humble agricultural beginnings to become one of the most wide…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Edwin Arlington Robinson
Nixon Waterman
1859 1944
They overlapped for 67 years (1869–1935). When Edwin Arlington Robinson was born, Nixon Waterman was about 10. Nixon Waterman was about 76 when Edwin Arlington Robinson died.
Edwin Arlington Robinson in history Nixon Waterman in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,569 km separate Head Tide, Maine, USA from Newark, Illinois, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Nixon Waterman

Open both on the History Atlas

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

life

Edwin Arlington Robinson only

social self death dead happiness limits enduring clerks humanity philosophical ordinary shop

Nixon Waterman only

future urgency kindness rose lily wind love warmth leaves garden woman idol

From the biographies

Edwin Arlington Robinson: head tide maine, gardiner maine, tilbury town, the torrent and the night before, the children of the night, richard cory, miniver cheevy, the man against the sky. Nixon Waterman: newark, illinois, creston, iowa, chicago herald, small change, a rose to the living, opinion columns, ben king's verse, some home-made poems.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

Another Dark Lady
Edwin Arlington Robinson
76% woman
Compare
An Idol of Clay
Nixon Waterman
Exit
Edwin Arlington Robinson
76%
Compare
An Idol of Clay
Nixon Waterman
Reuben Bright
Edwin Arlington Robinson
73% world, social
Compare
An Idol of Clay
Nixon Waterman
The Clerks
Edwin Arlington Robinson
73%
Compare
To-day
Nixon Waterman
Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
73% urgency
Compare
To-day
Nixon Waterman
Exit
Edwin Arlington Robinson
72%
Compare
To-day
Nixon Waterman

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1869 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1870 Second Industrial Revolution Accelerates
1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'
1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems

Edwin Arlington Robinson

1891 Robinson's Enrollment at Harvard University
1896 Publication of First Book, 'The Torrent and the Nightingale'
1897 Publication of 'Children of the Night'
1897 Publication of 'The Children of the Night'
1904 Publication of 'The Man Who Died'
1921 Robinson's First Pulitzer Prize
1922 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1928 Robinson's Second Pulitzer Prize

Nixon Waterman

1880 Early Education and Teaching Career of Nixon Waterman
1885 Marriage to Clara Waterman
1895 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Nixon Waterman'
1900 Relocation to Chicago
1911 Publication of 'The Heart of the World'
1920 Recognition by the Poetry Society of America
1930 Publication of 'Songs of the Prairie'
1940 Final Years in California

Emotional landscapes

Edwin Arlington Robinson: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Nixon Waterman: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

Skip to main content