George Sterling was born on 1 December 1869 in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, and died on 17 November 1926 in San Francisco, California. During his lifetime he was celebrated, often extravagantly, as the foremost poet of the American Pacific Coast: a writer of redwood groves, desert immensities, sea fog, cosmic fire, erotic dream, and supernatural terror. His reputation later suffered a dramatic eclipse. The rich…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
George Sterling
Poet B
Howard Phelps Putnam
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 74%
Blended 74%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Howard Phelps Putnam was born in 1894 in Allston, Massachusetts, then a distinctly suburban and semi-rural part of Boston, and died on July 3, 1948, in Jamaica Plain. He belonged to the generation of American writers formed between the confident cultural inheritance of the nineteenth century and the disillusioning modernity of the First World War. His reputation never became as large as those of several Yale contempo…
In time
George Sterling
Howard Phelps Putnam
1869
1948
They overlapped for 33 years (1894–1926).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, George Sterling was about 25.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 32 when George Sterling died.
On the map
About 183 km separate Sag Harbor, New York, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Howard Phelps Putnam
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
social
George Sterling: sag harbor, san francisco, the testimony of the suns, a wine of wizardry, ambrose bierce, jack london, bohemian club, california poet. Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
1895
The X-Ray Discovery
George Sterling
Howard Phelps Putnam
Emotional landscapes
George Sterling: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness. Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear.