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

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Kreymborg

Poet B

Max Ehrmann Max Ehrmann
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 65% Blended 65%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Kreymborg

Alfred Kreymborg

10 December 1883 – 14 August 1966 (~83)
2 live poems · English

In the early decades of the twentieth century, when American poetry was struggling to break free from the strictures of Victorian convention, a slight, chess-obsessed son of German immigrants emerged as one of the most influential figures in literary modernism. Alfred Kreymborg, born on December 10, 1883, in New York City, would become far more than a poet. He was a literary impresario, a talent scout with an uncanny…

“We have to learn to live with one another, or we shall cease to live at all.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872 – 9 September 1945 (~73)
1 live poem · English

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Joy

In time

Alfred Kreymborg
Max Ehrmann
1872 1966
They overlapped for 63 years (1883–1945). When Alfred Kreymborg was born, Max Ehrmann was about 11. Alfred Kreymborg was about 62 when Max Ehrmann died.

On the map

About 1,148 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Terre Haute, Indiana, 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

Alfred Kreymborg: new york city, german immigrants, greenwich village, alfred stieglitz, the glebe, des imagistes, imagism, others: a magazine of the new verse. Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius.

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.

Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
76% life
Compare
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
71%
Compare
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Max Ehrmann: Peace, Spirituality, Joy.

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