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
Manuel Machado
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 60%
Poems 74%
Blended 66%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…
“The sight of a single thing, however beautiful it may be, eventually becomes a nightmare.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Manuel Machado
1874
1948
They overlapped for 54 years (1894–1947).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Manuel Machado was about 20.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 53 when Manuel Machado died.
On the map
About 5,443 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Seville, Spain. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Howard Phelps Putnam
Manuel Machado
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. Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma.
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
Manuel Machado
1901
First Published Work
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing.