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
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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…
“Never take anyone's word for anything.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Maine, then a bustling coastal town in Massachusetts, and died on 24 March 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his lifetime he became, by a considerable margin, the most famous American poet of the nineteenth century. His verses were memorized in schools, recited in parlors, printed in newspapers, sung, parodied, and carried across the Atlantic…
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”
About 158 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Portland, Maine, USA. Both have ground in Boston and 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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: portland maine, bowdoin college, nathaniel hawthorne, frances appleton, paul revere’s ride, the village blacksmith, the song of hiawatha, outre-mer.
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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.
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