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
E. E. Cummings
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 80%
Blended 72%
Swap sides
Another related pair
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…
“Mostpeople are amorous of misunderstanding.”
In time
Lew R. Sarett
E. E. Cummings
1888
1962
They overlapped for 61 years (1894–1954).
When E. E. Cummings was born, Lew R. Sarett was about 6.
E. E. Cummings was about 60 when Lew R. Sarett died.
On the map
About 1,365 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.
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
Lew R. Sarett: chicago, marquette, benton harbor, university of michigan, beloit college, harvard law school, many many moons, the box of god. E. E. Cummings: cambridge massachusetts, joy farm, the enormous room, william slater brown, eimi, tulips and chimneys, anne minnerly barton, marion morehouse.
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
Lew R. Sarett
E. E. Cummings
Emotional landscapes
Lew R. Sarett: Anger, Irony, Joy. E. E. Cummings: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.