Lew R. Sarett, the poet of the wilderness, was born Lewis Zaratzsky—later Saretsky—on May 16, 1888, in the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of Chicago, Illinois. His parents, Rudolph Zaratzsky, a clothing cutter from Poland, and Jeanette Bloch from Lithuania, had arrived in America seeking opportunity amid the waves of Eastern European migration. As their only child, young Lew grew up in a household shaped by both the…
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
Lew R. Sarett
Poet B
Carl Sandburg
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 65%
Poems 84%
Blended 73%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Carl Sandburg, born 6 January 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois, and dead 22 July 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, became one of the most recognizable American writers of the twentieth century: a poet of factories and prairies, a journalist of civic life, a collector and performer of folk songs, a novelist and children’s writer, and the immensely popular biographer of Abraham Lincoln. Few writers worked so deliberately t…
“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.”
In time
Lew R. Sarett
Carl Sandburg
1878
1967
They overlapped for 67 years (1888–1954).
When Lew R. Sarett was born, Carl Sandburg was about 10.
Carl Sandburg was about 76 when Lew R. Sarett died.
On the map
About 251 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from Galesburg, Illinois, USA. Both have ground in Illinois.
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
Lew R. Sarett only
From the biographies
chicago
illinois
america
Lew R. Sarett: chicago, marquette, benton harbor, university of michigan, beloit college, harvard law school, many many moons, the box of god. Carl Sandburg: galesburg, flat rock, abraham lincoln, chicago, lillian steichen, chicago poems, cornhuskers, smoke and steel.
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.
Lew R. Sarett
Carl Sandburg
Emotional landscapes
Lew R. Sarett: Anger, Irony, Joy. Carl Sandburg: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.