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.
Yone Noguchi
Bliss Carman
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 annals of literary history, few figures occupy as singular a position as Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who dared to write primarily in English during an era when such a choice seemed almost inconceivable. Born Yonejiro Noguchi on December 8, 1875, in the coastal town of Tsushima near Nagoya, Japan, he would become a pioneering voice in cross-cultural literature, a man who walked between East and West with rema…
“Truth is truth, not less, not more, under any circumstances.”
William Bliss Carman, known throughout his literary life as Bliss Carman, was born on 15 April 1861 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and died on 8 June 1929 in New Canaan, Connecticut. For several decades around the turn of the twentieth century, he was among the most widely read poets associated with Canada. He enjoyed an international reputation unusual for a Canadian writer of his generation, published extensively i…
“The greatest poem is not that which is written, but that which is lived.”
About 10,695 km separate Tsushima, Aichi, Japan from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. 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.
Yone Noguchi: tsushima, nagoya, keio university, joaquin miller, seen and unseen, the american diary of a japanese girl, from the eastern sea, the pilgrimage. Bliss Carman: fredericton, new brunswick, low tide on grand pré, songs from vagabondia, richard hovey, sappho: one hundred lyrics, the joys of the road, mary perry king.
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.
Yone Noguchi: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness. Bliss Carman: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace.
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