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.
Robert Burns
James Hogg
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…
“A poet is a creature of impulse, and must follow the bent of his own genius.”
The story of James Hogg is one of the most remarkable and unlikely ascents in the history of British literature. Born into the humblest of circumstances in the wilds of the Scottish Borders, he rose from a life of manual labour to stand, albeit often awkwardly, alongside the literary giants of his age. He was a man of profound contradictions: a self-taught genius who could be as coarse as he was inspired, a humble sh…
“My mother is actually a living miscellany of old songs. I never believed that she had half so many until I came to a trial: there are none in your collection of which she hath not a part.”
About 93 km separate Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland from Ettrick, Selkirkshire, Scotland. Both have ground in Alba / Scotland.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Robert Burns: alloway, dumfries, william burnes, jean armour, the twa dogs, to a mouse, the holy fair, kilmarnock edition. James Hogg: scottish borders, ettrick shepherd, the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner, sir walter scott, the queen's wake, kilmeny, the witch of fife, the mountain bard.
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.
Robert Burns: Tenderness, Longing, Joy. James Hogg: Wonder, Fear, Joy.
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