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

James Elroy Flecker James Elroy Flecker

Poet B

Orrick Johns Orrick Johns
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% Poems 79% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
James Elroy Flecker

James Elroy Flecker

5 November 1884 – 3 January 1915 (~31)
2 live poems · English

The story of James Elroy Flecker is one of brilliant promise cut tragically short, of a poet who sought to recapture the lush exoticism and sensuous beauty of the Romantics in an age growing increasingly modernist and austere. Born Herman Elroy Flecker on November 5, 1884, in Lewisham, London, he would live only thirty years before tuberculosis claimed him, yet in that brief span he created a body of work that contin…

“It is true that the aim of poetry is to create beauty, but this beauty must be shaped by technique.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Love Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Orrick Johns

Orrick Johns

2 June 1887 – 8 July 1946 (~59)
2 live poems · English

Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony

In time

James Elroy Flecker
Orrick Johns
1884 1946
They overlapped for 29 years (1887–1915). When Orrick Johns was born, James Elroy Flecker was about 3. Orrick Johns was about 28 when James Elroy Flecker died.

On the map

About 6,231 km separate Deptford, London, England from Sturgis, Michigan, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

James Elroy Flecker: lewisham, tuberculosis, the bridge of fire, thirty-six poems, the golden journey to samarkand, hassan, hellé skiadaressi, parnassian. Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition.

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.

Pavlovna in London
James Elroy Flecker
71%
Compare
The Mad Woman
Orrick Johns
Pavlovna in London
James Elroy Flecker
70%
Compare
Politicians
Orrick Johns
The Old Ships
James Elroy Flecker
68% world
Compare
The Mad Woman
Orrick Johns
The Old Ships
James Elroy Flecker
63%
Compare
Politicians
Orrick Johns

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

James Elroy Flecker: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

Skip to main content