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.
Harold Monro
Robert Louis Stevenson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the heart of Georgian London, amid the tumult of a literary revolution that would reshape English poetry forever, stood a slight, melancholic figure whose contribution to modern literature far exceeded his own poetic achievements. Harold Edward Monro, born on March 14, 1879, in Brussels to Scottish parents, would become the impresario of modernism, the keeper of poetry's most famous bookshop, and a poet whose work…
“I suddenly became conscious of myself as a solitary and wayward person.”
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
About 756 km separate Brussels, Belgium from Edinburgh, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Harold Monro: brussels, georgian poetry, the poetry review, poetry bookshop, milk for the cat, children of love, strange meetings, the earth for sale. Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes.
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.
Harold Monro: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder.
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