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
George Edward Woodberry
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 69%
Blended 69%
Swap sides
Another related pair
The Woodberrys—or Woodburys, as various spellings of the name exist—were an old New England family who had immigrated early in the colonial period and established deep roots along Massachusetts's North Shore. Since settlement took hold in Beverly and neighboring seaport towns, the family had been native to this maritime region, and many of Woodberry's forebears were sea captains and sailors. This ancestral connection…
“The life of a poet is the life of a man who has accepted the burden of beauty.”
In time
Max Ehrmann
George Edward Woodberry
1855
1945
They overlapped for 59 years (1872–1930).
When Max Ehrmann was born, George Edward Woodberry was about 17.
Max Ehrmann was about 58 when George Edward Woodberry died.
On the map
About 1,427 km separate Terre Haute, Indiana, USA from Beverly, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.
George Edward Woodberry
Themes they return to
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.
From the biographies
philosophical
Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius. George Edward Woodberry: massachusetts, harvard college, edgar allan poe, the north shore watch, the nation, columbia university, comparative literature, philosophy.
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
George Edward Woodberry
Emotional landscapes
Max Ehrmann: Peace, Spirituality, Joy. George Edward Woodberry: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.