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.
William Blake
Phoebe Cary
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street, Soho, London, into a city that was becoming the commercial, imperial, and intellectual center of Britain. He died seventy years later, on 12 August 1827, in a modest room south of the Thames, leaving behind work that had attracted only a small and sometimes bewildered audience during his lifetime. Yet Blake would eventually be recognized as one of the mos…
“Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.”
In the grand tapestry of American literature, the threads of the famous are often woven with the brightest gold, their names—Whitman, Dickinson, Poe—echoing through the ages. But the strength and beauty of the cloth also depend on the countless subtle, sturdy threads that provide its foundation, its texture, and its often overlooked complexity. Phoebe Cary was one such thread. A poet of sharp wit, profound empathy, a…
“I have lain down, and it seems, because Alice is not there, there is no reason why I should get up.”
About 6,359 km separate London, England from Mount Healthy, Ohio, 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.
William Blake: soho, london, catherine boucher, poetical sketches, songs of innocence, songs of experience, the marriage of heaven and hell, the tyger. Phoebe Cary: mount healthy, ohio wilderness, alice cary, rufus wilmot griswold, nearer home, one sweetly solemn thought, poems and parodies, a psalm of life.
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.
William Blake: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality. Phoebe Cary: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness.
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