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.
Herman Melville
Robert W. Service
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Herman Melville stands as one of American literature's most enigmatic and profound figures, a writer whose genius went largely unrecognized during his lifetime but whose works have come to define the very essence of American literary ambition. Born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, and dying in relative obscurity on September 28, 1891, Melville's seventy-two years encompassed a life of remarkable adventure, creati…
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and died on 11 September 1958 at Lancieux, in Brittany, France. Few poets have occupied quite the cultural territory that Service came to possess. He was not, by his own candid admission, a poet of intricate philosophical argument or formal innovation. He called much of what he wrote “verse” rather than “poetry,” a distinction that re…
“Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.”
About 5,332 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Preston, Lancashire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Herman Melville: new york city, typee, moby-dick, nathaniel hawthorne, whaling, bartleby, fairhaven, acushnet. Robert W. Service: preston, bard of the yukon, the shooting of dan mcgrew, the cremation of sam mcgee, songs of a sourdough, the spell of the yukon, dawson city, klondike gold rush.
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.
Herman Melville: Wonder, Fear, Spirituality. Robert W. Service: Fear, Despair, Sorrow.
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