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
Orrick Johns
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.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 69%
Poems 86%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Orrick Johns
1887
1948
They overlapped for 53 years (1894–1946).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Orrick Johns was about 7.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 52 when Orrick Johns died.
On the map
About 1,185 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Sturgis, Michigan, 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
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition.
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
Orrick Johns
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.