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

Howard Phelps Putnam Howard Phelps Putnam
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 72% Poems 81% Blended 76%
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
Howard Phelps Putnam

Howard Phelps Putnam

1894 – 3 July 1948 (~54)
2 live poems · English

Howard Phelps Putnam was born in 1894 in Allston, Massachusetts, then a distinctly suburban and semi-rural part of Boston, and died on July 3, 1948, in Jamaica Plain. He belonged to the generation of American writers formed between the confident cultural inheritance of the nineteenth century and the disillusioning modernity of the First World War. His reputation never became as large as those of several Yale contempo…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Fear

In time

Alfred Kreymborg
Howard Phelps Putnam
1883 1966
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948). When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Alfred Kreymborg was about 11. Alfred Kreymborg was about 65 when Howard Phelps Putnam died.

On the map

About 306 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, 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

Alfred Kreymborg only

Howard Phelps Putnam only

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. Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét.

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.

Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
74%
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
73% life
Compare
I Am an Atheist
Howard Phelps Putnam
Idealists
Alfred Kreymborg
69% self
Compare
One Woman
Howard Phelps Putnam
Prodigy
Alfred Kreymborg
65% life
Compare
One Woman
Howard Phelps Putnam

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Kreymborg: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear.

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