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 twilight of the Elizabethan age, when England's cultural flowering reached its zenith, a remarkable composer emerged whose keyboard works would outlive the very dynasty that witnessed his birth. Giles Farnaby, born around 1563 and departing this world in 1640, stands as one of the most distinctive voices of the English Renaissance, a master whose miniature musical portraits captured both the exuberance and mel…
Katherine Philips, born Katherine Fowler on 1 January 1632 and dead at only thirty-two on 22 June 1664, achieved a distinction that would have seemed improbable in the unsettled England of her youth: she became a celebrated poet while she was still alive, and she did so as a woman writing in forms and subjects conventionally claimed by men. Known to her readers and friends as “Orinda,” Philips fashioned poems of frie…
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LGBTQ+ Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
They overlapped for 9 years (1632–1640).
When Katherine Philips was born, Giles Farnaby was about 69.
Katherine Philips was about 8 when Giles Farnaby died.
Giles Farnaby:
elizabethan age, london, fitzwilliam virginal book, william byrd, john bull, loth to depart, woody-cock, his rest.
Katherine Philips:
orinda, society of friendship, friendship's mystery, james philips, cardiganshire, london, puritan culture, civil wars.
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.