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.
Trumbull Stickney
Li Shangyin
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…
“There's nothing to get out of life; there are ways to live it.”
Li Shangyin, born around 812 and dead around 858, was one of the most brilliant, difficult, and emotionally resonant poets of the late Tang dynasty. His courtesy name was Yishan; he also used the literary sobriquets Yuxisheng, “Student of the Jade Stream,” and Fannansheng, “Student of the Southern Mountains.” In the history of Chinese poetry, he is commonly placed beside Du Mu as a defining voice of the Late Tang, th…
About 8,390 km separate Geneva, Switzerland from Qinyang, Henan Province, China. 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.
Trumbull Stickney: geneva, boston, harvard college, william vaughn moody, george santayana, dramatic lyrics, greek tragedy, american school of classical studies. Li Shangyin: late tang dynasty, henei, qinyang, du mu, linghu chu, wang maoyuan, jinshi examination, seven-character lüshi.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Trumbull Stickney: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. Li Shangyin: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.
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