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.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Alan Seeger
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
John Gillespie Magee Jr., born in Shanghai, China, on 9 June 1922 and killed over Lincolnshire, England, on 11 December 1941, occupies an unusual and enduring place in twentieth-century literature. He is remembered above all for “High Flight,” the fourteen-line poem that begins, “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” and ends with one of the most quoted conclusions in English poetry: “Put out my hand, and tou…
“It was written in about twenty minutes.”
Alan Seeger was born in New York City on 22 June 1888, into an American family whose comfort, education, and international connections gave him unusual freedom while also placing before him the question of what a privileged young man ought to do with his life. He died on 4 July 1916, age twenty-eight, in the Battle of the Somme while serving in the French Foreign Legion. In the years between those dates he became, in…
“I have no fear of death, and am quite ready to meet it.”
About 11,858 km separate Shanghai, China from New York City, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.: shanghai, high flight, royal canadian air force, rugby school, rupert brooke, canadian air force, supermarine spitfire, sonnet to rupert brooke. Alan Seeger: new york city, battle of the somme, french foreign legion, i have a rendezvous with death, the torture of cuauhtemoc, charles seeger sr., elsie simmons adams seeger, pete seeger.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality. Alan Seeger: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.
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