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.
Arthur Davison Ficke
Louis Untermeyer
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Arthur Davison Ficke was born in Davenport, Iowa, on 10 November 1883, at a moment when the United States was rapidly becoming both an industrial power and a more self-conscious literary nation. He died on 30 November 1945, at the age of sixty-two, leaving a body of poetry that can seem difficult to classify neatly. He was at once a disciplined maker of sonnets, a cosmopolitan traveler, a student of Asian cultures, a…
“The quietest moments often contain the loudest truths.”
In the sprawling landscape of twentieth-century American letters, few figures cast as long or as peculiar a shadow as Louis Untermeyer. Born on October 1, 1885, in New York City, and dying ninety-two years later on December 18, 1977, in Newtown, Connecticut, Untermeyer occupied a unique position in American cultural life. He was not primarily remembered as a great poet himself, though he published volumes of verse. H…
“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts.”
About 1,389 km separate Davenport, Iowa, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Arthur Davison Ficke: davenport, iowa, spectra hoax, witter bynner, anne knish, harvard university, the breaking of bonds, sonnets of a portrait-painter. Louis Untermeyer: new york city, newtown, connecticut, modern american poetry, harriet monroe, ezra pound, t.s. eliot, carl sandburg, robert frost.
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.
Arthur Davison Ficke: Fear, Sorrow, Wonder. Louis Untermeyer: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.
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