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.
John Townsend Trowbridge
Ezra Pound
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters, John Townsend Trowbridge occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully remembered, a writer whose prolific output and genuine popularity during his lifetime have faded into the scholarly margins, yet whose contribution to American literature, particularly children's and young adult fiction, deserves far greater recognition than it typically receives. B…
“Here was life, and I was young!”
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on 30 October 1885 in Hailey, in the Idaho Territory of the United States, and died on 1 November 1972 in Venice, Italy. Few writers altered the course of twentieth-century poetry as decisively as he did, and few have left behind a legacy so divided between artistic admiration and moral revulsion. Pound was a poet, editor, translator, critic, impresario, polemicist, and tireless orga…
“Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance.”
About 2,927 km separate Ogden, New York, USA from Hailey, Idaho, 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.
John Townsend Trowbridge: ogden, new york, windsor stone trowbridge, father brighthopes, neighbor jackwood, underground railroad, the south: a tour of its battle-fields and ruined cities, jack hazard and his fortunes, doing his best books. Ezra Pound: hailey, venice, imagism, vorticism, t.s. eliot, james joyce, h.d., the cantos.
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.
John Townsend Trowbridge: Sorrow, Despair, Anger. Ezra Pound: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.