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.
William H. A. Moore
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 thought you might be interested in this poem I wrote the other day.”
William H. A. Moore, born about 1885 and deceased in 1960, belongs to that important but still insufficiently recovered generation of African American poets whose careers connected the literary culture of the late nineteenth century with the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and its related movements in Chicago, Washington, and other urban centers. His surviving reputation rests on a small body of lyric poetry, sca…
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.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.: shanghai, high flight, royal canadian air force, rugby school, rupert brooke, canadian air force, supermarine spitfire, sonnet to rupert brooke. William H. A. Moore: new york city, dusk songs, the crisis, james weldon johnson, harlem renaissance, city college of new york, columbia university, 1919 race riot.
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. William H. A. Moore: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow.
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