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
Leonard Bacon
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 70%
Poems 82%
Blended 75%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Leonard Bacon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, translator, and critic, was a figure whose life and work embodied the enduring power of traditional verse to illuminate the absurdities, adventures, and quiet profundities of the human condition. Born at the close of the nineteenth century and passing in the middle of the tumultuous twentieth, he navigated an era of literary upheaval with a steadfast commitment…
“Poetry continues to be my blessing and my curse.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Leonard Bacon
1887
1954
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Leonard Bacon was about 7.
Leonard Bacon was about 61 when Howard Phelps Putnam died.
On the map
About 423 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Syracuse, New York, 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
yale university
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. Leonard Bacon: solvay, new york, peace dale, rhode island, sunderland capture, pulitzer prize, the scrannel pipe, autolycus, montana cattle trails, eureka ranch.
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
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Leonard Bacon: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.