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.
James Stephens
Julia Ward Howe
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
James Stephens, born on 2 February 1882 and dead on 26 December 1950, occupies an unusual and still slightly elusive place in Irish literature. He was a poet, novelist, storyteller, essayist, translator, broadcaster, and tireless performer of his own work; he belonged to the generation of the Irish Literary Revival, yet he never fitted comfortably into the movement’s principal categories. He was not, like W. B. Yeats…
“The poet is a person who is always in love with something.”
On a cold November morning in 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke in her room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., with verses forming in her mind. She had visited Union Army camps the previous day, witnessing thousands of soldiers preparing for battle while singing "John Brown's Body." Now, in the pre-dawn darkness, words came to her with unusual clarity and force. Rising quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping childre…
“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!”
About 5,115 km separate Dublin, Ireland from New York City, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
James Stephens: irish literary revival, the crock of gold, reincarnations, the snare, george russell, insurrections, meath protestant industrial school, philosophical argument. Julia Ward Howe: washington d.c., battle hymn of the republic, john brown's body, passion flowers, samuel gridley howe, american woman suffrage association, mother's day proclamation, municipal housekeeping.
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.
James Stephens: Longing, Wonder, Peace. Julia Ward Howe: Irony, Sorrow, Spirituality.
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