In the winter twilight of a small upstate New York village, where snow lay thick upon the Genesee Valley, John Vance Cheney was born on December 29, 1848, in Groveland, New York. His life would span a transformative period in American literature, carrying him from the fading embers of Romanticism to the threshold of Modernism, from the dusty offices of a country law practice to the grand reading rooms of two of Ameri…
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
John Vance Cheney
Poet B
Robert Nichols
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 72%
Blended 72%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the pantheon of early twentieth-century British poetry, certain voices echo through the decades with enduring resonance, while others fade into the margins of literary history despite their once-prominent positions. Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols belongs to this latter category—a poet whose name once commanded respect in literary circles, whose work appeared alongside that of his more famous contemporaries, yet whos…
“It was written by a man for mankind's sake, that might once more become that which is humane not an empty phrase.”
In time
John Vance Cheney
Robert Nichols
1848
1944
They overlapped for 30 years (1893–1922).
When Robert Nichols was born, John Vance Cheney was about 45.
Robert Nichols was about 29 when John Vance Cheney died.
On the map
About 5,647 km separate Groveland, New York, USA from Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
John Vance Cheney
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
John Vance Cheney: groveland, new york, abigail perkins vance cheney, thistle-drift, the man with the hoe - a reply, century magazine, free public library of san francisco, newberry library, edwin markham. Robert Nichols: shanklin, isle of wight, john bowyer buchanan nichols, mary catherine nichols, invocation: war poems and others, aurelia and other poems, w.b. yeats, georgian poets.
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.
1895
The X-Ray Discovery
John Vance Cheney
Robert Nichols
Emotional landscapes
John Vance Cheney: Peace, Spirituality, Joy. Robert Nichols: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.