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.
Bayard Taylor
Edward Taylor
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
James Bayard Taylor was born on 11 January 1825 in Kennett Township, near Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died on 19 December 1878 in Berlin, Germany. During his lifetime he was among the most visible American men of letters: a poet, novelist, journalist, lecturer, travel writer, editor, translator, and, briefly, a diplomat. His fame was immense by the standards of his day. Audiences crowded his l…
“To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.”
Edward Taylor was born about 1642, probably in Sketchley, Leicestershire, England, into a world in which political upheaval and religious conviction entered ordinary life with unusual force. He died on 24 June 1729 in Westfield, Massachusetts, after nearly six decades as that frontier town’s minister, physician, teacher, community counselor, and private poet. During his lifetime he was known chiefly as a learned and…
About 5,628 km separate Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, USA from Sketchley, Leicestershire, England. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
Bayard Taylor: kennett township, chester county, ximena; or, the battle of the sierra morena, views a-foot, eldorado; or, adventures in the path of empire, the story of kennett, the bedouin song, quaker farming family. Edward Taylor: sketchley, leicestershire, westfield, harvard college, elizabeth fitch, james fitch, the lay-man’s lamentation, upon wedlock, and death of children.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Bayard Taylor: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality. Edward Taylor: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair.
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