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.
Ralph Hodgson
Gerard Manley Hopkins
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Ralph Hodgson was born on 9 September 1871 in Darlington, County Durham, and died on 3 November 1962 in Minerva, Ohio. His life traversed an astonishing stretch of history: the late Victorian industrial world, the upheaval of two world wars, the flowering and fragmentation of literary modernism, and the gradual emergence of a more public consciousness about animals and the natural environment. Yet his poetry seems to…
“The Golden Rule was called new-fangled, once upon a time.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, which has since been absorbed into the bustling expanse of Greater London. He entered the world as the eldest of what would become nine children in a prosperous, artistic, and devout High Church Anglican family. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a successful marine insurance adjuster who also served as the Hawaiian consul-general in London and dabble…
“Nothing is so beautiful as spring.”
About 355 km separate Darlington, County Durham, England from Stratford, Essex, 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.
Ralph Hodgson: darlington, minerva, ohio, the bull, the last blackbird, poems, the song of honour, eve, time, you old gipsy man. Gerard Manley Hopkins: stratford, essex, robert bridges, the wreck of the deutschland, sprung rhythm, oxford movement, john henry newman, society of jesus, terrible sonnets.
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.
Ralph Hodgson: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.
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