Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
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
Orrick Johns
Poet B
Wallace Stevens
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.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 70%
Poems 85%
Blended 77%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Wallace Stevens stands as one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in American poetry—a philosophical poet who balanced a successful corporate career with the creation of some of the most intellectually challenging and aesthetically innovative verse of the 20th century. His poetry, characterized by its luxuriant language, philosophical depth, and preoccupation with the imagination's relationship to reality, cont…
“It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.”
In time
Orrick Johns
Wallace Stevens
1879
1955
They overlapped for 60 years (1887–1946).
When Orrick Johns was born, Wallace Stevens was about 8.
Wallace Stevens was about 67 when Orrick Johns died.
On the map
About 812 km separate Sturgis, Michigan, USA from Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. Shared ground: United States.
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
philosophical
Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition. Wallace Stevens: reading, pennsylvania, harvard university, george santayana, harmonium, sunday morning, the emperor of ice-cream, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, the snow man.
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.
Orrick Johns
Wallace Stevens
Emotional landscapes
Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Wallace Stevens: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.