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.
Alfred Noyes
Robert W. Service
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alfred Noyes was born on 16 September 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and died on 25 June 1958 at his home on the Isle of Wight. During the first decades of the twentieth century he was among the best-known English poets in the world: a writer whose books sold widely, whose recitations drew large audiences, and whose poems entered schools, anthologies, music halls, and family memory. He was celebrated above all…
“A poem is a thought caught in a mood.”
Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and died on 11 September 1958 at Lancieux, in Brittany, France. Few poets have occupied quite the cultural territory that Service came to possess. He was not, by his own candid admission, a poet of intricate philosophical argument or formal innovation. He called much of what he wrote “verse” rather than “poetry,” a distinction that re…
“Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.”
About 141 km separate Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England from Preston, Lancashire, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alfred Noyes: wolverhampton, isle of wight, the highwayman, garnett daniels, forty singing seamen, drake: an english epic, watchers of the sky, exeter college. Robert W. Service: preston, bard of the yukon, the shooting of dan mcgrew, the cremation of sam mcgee, songs of a sourdough, the spell of the yukon, dawson city, klondike gold rush.
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.
Alfred Noyes: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness. Robert W. Service: Fear, Despair, Sorrow.
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