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.
In the pantheon of 19th-century American artists, few figures embody the spirit of creative rebellion and social conscience as powerfully as Anne Whitney. Born into an era when women were expected to confine their artistic pursuits to watercolors and embroidery, Whitney defied convention to become one of America's most accomplished sculptors and a significant voice in poetry. Her ninety-four years spanned a transform…
“For me - no principle is endangered in his participation in this affair - more than in any other person's performance with whom I may have to do.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Alphonse de Lamartine was born on 21 October 1790 in Mâcon, in the Burgundy region of eastern France, and died in Paris on 1 March 1869. Poet, novelist, historian, diplomat, parliamentarian, and revolutionary statesman, he lived at the point where literary Romanticism and modern French political life came into being. Few writers have more completely embodied the nineteenth-century belief that eloquence might be a pub…
“La poésie est l'incarnation de la pensée humaine dans le langage humain.”
They overlapped for 49 years (1821–1869).
When Anne Whitney was born, Alphonse de Lamartine was about 31.
Anne Whitney was about 48 when Alphonse de Lamartine died.
About 5,823 km separate
Watertown, Massachusetts, USA from
Mâcon, Burgundy, France.
Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Anne Whitney:
watertown, massachusetts, james monroe, civil war, abolition, women's rights, the lone parting, equinoxial, ethiopia.
Alphonse de Lamartine:
mâcon, burgundy, le lac, méditations poétiques, julie charles, voyage en orient, mary ann birch, romanticism.
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.
