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.
Rudyard Kipling
A. Mary F. Robinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Rudyard Kipling was born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in the bustling colonial port of Bombay, British India, a city that would forever pulse through his veins like the monsoon rains and the clamor of its streets. He died on January 18, 1936, in London, England, at the age of seventy, his body laid to rest in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey after a life that spanned the height of the British Empire…
“I have nothing to add, and nothing to retract.”
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…
“How dreary the state and rank of your second-best great poet, enthroned in dismal glory on the less frequented slopes of Parnassus!”
About 7,291 km separate Mumbai, Maharashtra, India from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Rudyard Kipling: bombay, westminster abbey, the jungle book, just so stories, kim, gunga din, the light that failed, caroline balestier. A. Mary F. Robinson: leamington spa, aurillac, madame darmesteter, madame duclaux, a handful of honeysuckle, the new arcadia, emily brontë, james darmesteter.
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.
Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. A. Mary F. Robinson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.
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