Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…
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
Max Ehrmann
Poet B
Joyce Kilmer
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 64%
Blended 64%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on 6 December 1886 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, into a household in which intellectual seriousness and artistic feeling were not opposites but companion forces. His father, Frederick Barnett Kilmer, was a physician, analytical chemist, and later a leading scientific figure at Johnson & Johnson; his work helped establish standards for pharmaceutical and consumer-health products in an era…
“The Catholic Church is the only thing that makes life worth living.”
In time
Max Ehrmann
Joyce Kilmer
1872
1945
They overlapped for 33 years (1886–1918).
When Joyce Kilmer was born, Max Ehrmann was about 14.
Max Ehrmann was about 46 when Joyce Kilmer died.
On the map
About 1,110 km separate Terre Haute, Indiana, USA from New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Shared ground: United States.
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
Max Ehrmann only
From the biographies
Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius. Joyce Kilmer: new brunswick, new jersey, aline murray, trees, roman catholicism, poetry society of america, columbia university, summer of love.
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.
Max Ehrmann
Joyce Kilmer
1918
Death in World War I
Emotional landscapes
Max Ehrmann: Peace, Spirituality, Joy. Joyce Kilmer: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace.