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.
E. E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the sun-dappled streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings entered the world with a quiet promise of rebellion that would one day shatter the conventions of American poetry. Known to family and friends simply as Estlin, and to the world as E.E. Cummings—or, in the lowercase stylings that publishers later adopted for his name—he would become one of the twentieth century’s most…
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
About 120 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in Massachusetts.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
E. E. Cummings: cambridge massachusetts, joy farm, the enormous room, william slater brown, eimi, tulips and chimneys, anne minnerly barton, marion morehouse. Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
E. E. Cummings: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.
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