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

Witter Bynner Witter Bynner

Poet B

Herbert Gorman Herbert Gorman
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71% Poems 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Witter Bynner

Witter Bynner

10 August 1881 – 1 June 1968 (~87)
4 live poems · English

Harold Witter Bynner, who published almost always as Witter Bynner and was known to friends as “Hal,” was born on 10 August 1881 in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 1 June 1968 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His long career carried him through several distinct literary eras: the cultivated, metrically formal verse of the early twentieth century; the disruptions and provocations of modernism; the American enthusiasm for Asia…

“Even in phraseology they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another, but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Herbert Gorman

Herbert Gorman

January 1893 – 28 October 1954 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Herbert Sherman Gorman entered the world in 1893 in Springfield, Massachusetts, a bustling industrial city nestled along the Connecticut River, where the hum of factories and the clang of railroads shaped the rhythms of daily life. Though the precise day of his birth remains unrecorded in many accounts, his arrival coincided with an America on the cusp of modernity, one foot still planted in the Victorian era and the…

“True rebellion in literature does not consist in noise, but in the quiet insistence on seeing reality without blinders.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing

In time

Witter Bynner
Herbert Gorman
1881 1968
They overlapped for 62 years (1893–1954). When Herbert Gorman was born, Witter Bynner was about 12. Witter Bynner was about 73 when Herbert Gorman died.

On the map

About 195 km separate Brooklyn, New York, USA from Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in New York.

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

Witter Bynner: brooklyn, santa fe, harvard university, young harvard, grenstone poems, spectrism, emanuel morgan, kiang kang-hu. Herbert Gorman: springfield massachusetts, new york city, jean wright gorman, the barcarole of james smith, the procession of masks, the peterborough anthology, james joyce, a passage to india.

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.

Ganymede
Witter Bynner
77% desire, beauty
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Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
Romance
Witter Bynner
76%
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Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
Ganymede
Witter Bynner
74%
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The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
Sands
Witter Bynner
73%
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The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
Romance
Witter Bynner
70% love, self
Compare
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
Foam
Witter Bynner
69%
Compare
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Witter Bynner: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Herbert Gorman: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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