Emanuel Morgan occupies one of the most unusual positions in American literary history: he was a poet who never existed in the ordinary biographical sense, yet whose poems, reputation, controversies, and afterlife have proved remarkably real. The dates commonly attached to him, 1916–1917, refer not to the span of a human life but to the brief public career of a deliberately invented authorial persona. “Emanuel Morgan…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
Emanuel Morgan
Poet B
Robert Nichols
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 58%
Blended 58%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the pantheon of early twentieth-century British poetry, certain voices echo through the decades with enduring resonance, while others fade into the margins of literary history despite their once-prominent positions. Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols belongs to this latter category—a poet whose name once commanded respect in literary circles, whose work appeared alongside that of his more famous contemporaries, yet whos…
“War doesn't ennoble: it degrades.”
In time
Emanuel Morgan
Robert Nichols
1893
1944
They overlapped for 2 years (1916–1917).
When Emanuel Morgan was born, Robert Nichols was about 23.
Robert Nichols was about 24 when Emanuel Morgan died.
On the map
About 5,531 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
history
Emanuel Morgan: spectrism, witter bynner, arthur davison ficke, santa fe, harvard university, tao te ching, mock avant-garde, poetry society of america. Robert Nichols: shanklin, isle of wight, john bowyer buchanan nichols, mary catherine nichols, invocation: war poems and others, aurelia and other poems, w.b. yeats, georgian poets.
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.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1916
Death in Battle
1916
Discovery of Heparin
1916
Execution and Legacy
Emanuel Morgan
Robert Nichols
Emotional landscapes
Emanuel Morgan: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing. Robert Nichols: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.