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
James Edwin Campbell
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 67%
Poems 81%
Blended 73%
Swap sides
Another related pair
James Edwin Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Ohio, and died there on January 26, 1896, before he had reached his twenty-ninth birthday. His life was brief, but it was unusually full: he was a teacher, school principal, educational organizer, newspaper editor, essayist, public speaker, and poet. Most enduringly, he was an important early African American literary artist whose poems preserved the sp…
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
James Edwin Campbell
1867
1948
They overlapped for 3 years (1894–1896).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, James Edwin Campbell was about 27.
Howard Phelps Putnam was about 2 when James Edwin Campbell died.
On the map
About 996 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Pomeroy, Ohio, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Howard Phelps Putnam
James Edwin Campbell
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
speech
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. James Edwin Campbell: pomeroy, ohio, driftings and gleanings, echoes from the cabin, paul laurence dunbar, west virginia teachers’ association, west virginia colored institute, mary lewis champ, kerr’s run colored school.
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
James Edwin Campbell
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. James Edwin Campbell: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy.