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
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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.”
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“The longer I live the more I value kindness and simplicity among the sons and daughters of men.”
About 5,191 km separate Beverly, Massachusetts, USA from Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. 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.
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. Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses.
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. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow.
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