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.
Arthur Davison Ficke
Louis Untermeyer
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Arthur Davison Ficke was born in Davenport, Iowa, on 10 November 1883, at a moment when the United States was rapidly becoming both an industrial power and a more self-conscious literary nation. He died on 30 November 1945, at the age of sixty-two, leaving a body of poetry that can seem difficult to classify neatly. He was at once a disciplined maker of sonnets, a cosmopolitan traveler, a student of Asian cultures, a…
“A word carefully chosen can outlast a stone monument built to pride.”
In the sprawling landscape of twentieth-century American letters, few figures cast as long or as peculiar a shadow as Louis Untermeyer. Born on October 1, 1885, in New York City, and dying ninety-two years later on December 18, 1977, in Newtown, Connecticut, Untermeyer occupied a unique position in American cultural life. He was not primarily remembered as a great poet himself, though he published volumes of verse. H…
“What most of us don't realize is that everyone loves poetry.”
About 1,389 km separate Davenport, Iowa, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Arthur Davison Ficke: davenport, iowa, spectra hoax, witter bynner, anne knish, harvard university, the breaking of bonds, sonnets of a portrait-painter. Louis Untermeyer: new york city, newtown, connecticut, modern american poetry, harriet monroe, ezra pound, t.s. eliot, carl sandburg, robert frost.
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.
Arthur Davison Ficke: Fear, Sorrow, Wonder. Louis Untermeyer: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.
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