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.
George Edward Woodberry
Max Ehrmann
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
The Woodberrys—or Woodburys, as various spellings of the name exist—were an old New England family who had immigrated early in the colonial period and established deep roots along Massachusetts's North Shore. Since settlement took hold in Beverly and neighboring seaport towns, the family had been native to this maritime region, and many of Woodberry's forebears were sea captains and sailors. This ancestral connection…
“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”
Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…
About 1,427 km separate Beverly, Massachusetts, USA from Terre Haute, Indiana, 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.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
George Edward Woodberry: massachusetts, harvard college, edgar allan poe, the north shore watch, the nation, columbia university, comparative literature, philosophy. Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius.
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.
George Edward Woodberry: Despair, Sorrow, Longing. Max Ehrmann: Peace, Spirituality, Joy.
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