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.
Edgar A. Guest
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…
“I have no idea whether it is any good or not.”
Edgar Albert Guest was born in Birmingham, England, on 20 August 1881, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 5 August 1959, fifteen days before his seventy-eighth birthday. During much of his long life, he was among the most familiar poets in the United States. His name appeared daily in newspapers, his verses were memorized in schools and recited at civic meetings, and his books sold in quantities that many more critica…
“Rather it is because it takes years to build a home, whereas a house can be builded in a few months.”
About 9,207 km separate Shanghai, China from Birmingham, England. Both have ground in England.
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. Edgar A. Guest: birmingham, detroit, people's poet, a heap o' livin', just folks, the path to home, it couldn't be done, nellie crossman.
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.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality. Edgar A. Guest: Joy, Tenderness, Peace.
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