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…
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
Howard Phelps Putnam
Poet B
Paul Valéry
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 65%
Poems 73%
Blended 69%
Swap sides
Another related pair
In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…
“The pleasure of understanding certain delicate arguments inclines the mind in favour of their conclusions.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Paul Valéry
1871
1948
They overlapped for 52 years (1894–1945).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Paul Valéry was about 23.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 51 when Paul Valéry died.
On the map
About 5,875 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Sète, Occitanie, France. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
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
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. Paul Valéry: sète, franco-prussian war, paris commune, symbolist movement, stéphane mallarmé, la jeune parque, le cimetière marin, charmes.
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
Howard Phelps Putnam
Paul Valéry
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Paul Valéry: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness.