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
King James Bible
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 47%
Poems 77%
Blended 61%
Swap sides
Another related pair
The King James Bible, more accurately called the King James Version or Authorized Version, does not have a birth and death date in the ordinary biographical sense, because it is neither a person nor the work of a solitary author. Yet it has a remarkably vivid life story. “Born” in print in 1611, during the reign of James VI and I (born June 19, 1566; died March 27, 1625), it emerged from religious conflict, royal cal…
“Variety of translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures.”
In time
Howard Phelps Putnam
King James Bible
1611
2026
They overlapped for 55 years (1894–1948).
When Howard Phelps Putnam was born, King James Bible was about 283.
On the map
About 5,264 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Hampton Court, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Howard Phelps Putnam
King James Bible
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. King James Bible: king james version, authorized version, hampton court conference, william tyndale, john wycliffe, lancelot andrewes, miles smith, george abbot.
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
King James Bible
Emotional landscapes
Howard Phelps Putnam: Irony, Longing, Fear. King James Bible: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder.