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
Strickland Gillilan
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 73%
Poems 77%
Blended 75%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Strickland Gillilan was born on 21 September 1869 in Jackson County, Ohio, a region whose rural rhythms, small-town sociability, and vigorous political culture supplied much of the material from which he would make a career. He died on 25 April 1954 in Baltimore, Maryland, after a long life spent as a journalist, lecturer, humorist, versifier, and public entertainer. In the literary histories that privilege modernism…
“Evidently you are under the impression that I do this work for the fun I get out of hearing me.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
Strickland Gillilan
1869
1954
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, Strickland Gillilan was about 25.
Strickland Gillilan was about 79 when Howard Phelps Putnam died.
On the map
About 1,042 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Jackson County, Ohio, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Howard Phelps Putnam
Strickland Gillilan
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
social
Howard Phelps Putnam: allston, massachusetts, jamaica plain, trinc, the five seasons, the earthly comedy, harvard, massachusetts, skull and bones, stephen vincent benét. Strickland Gillilan: jackson county, baltimore, the reading mother, including finnigin, sunshine and awkwardness, humorist, newspaper-minded poet, public entertainer.
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
Strickland Gillilan
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. Strickland Gillilan: Joy, Wonder, Irony.