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.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868, in the small, rolling hills of Great Barrington, Massachusetts—a town where the air carried the crisp scent of New England pines and the quiet rhythms of rural life. Born into a family of mixed African, Dutch, and French Huguenot heritage, he was the son of Alfred Du Bois, a restless barber and laborer of Haitian descent who soon vanished from t…
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”
Benjamin Griffith Brawley entered the world on April 22, 1882, in Columbia, South Carolina, during a time when the South was still grappling with the aftershocks of Reconstruction and the hardening grip of Jim Crow. The second eldest of nine children born to the Reverend Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Saphronia Dickerson Brawley, he grew up in a household that prized education, faith, and quiet dignity amid rac…
“Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. The Negro himself is the supreme challenge to American literature.”
About 1,131 km separate Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA from Columbia, South Carolina, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: great barrington, alfred du bois, mary silvina burghardt, fisk university, the souls of black folk, double consciousness, color line, niagara movement. Benjamin Griffith Brawley: columbia, south carolina, edward mcknight brawley, morehouse college, the atheneum, a prayer, the slaver, freedom on the free, the education.
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.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Benjamin Griffith Brawley: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.
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