William H. A. Moore, born about 1885 and deceased in 1960, belongs to that important but still insufficiently recovered generation of African American poets whose careers connected the literary culture of the late nineteenth century with the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and its related movements in Chicago, Washington, and other urban centers. His surviving reputation rests on a small body of lyric poetry, sca…
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
William H. A. Moore
Poet B
Otto Leland Bohanan
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.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 79%
Blended 79%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Otto Leland Bohanan, born around 1895 in Washington, D.C., and dead in New York City on December 6, 1932, belonged to the first generation of African American artists whose work helped prepare the ground for the Harlem Renaissance. He was a poet, composer, baritone, teacher, and cultivated public intellectual, a figure whose gifts moved easily among literature, music, education, and fraternity life. His surviving rep…
In time
William H. A. Moore
Otto Leland Bohanan
1885
1960
They overlapped for 38 years (1895–1932).
When Otto Leland Bohanan was born, William H. A. Moore was about 10.
William H. A. Moore was about 47 when Otto Leland Bohanan died.
On the map
About 328 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Washington, D.C., USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.
William H. A. Moore
Otto Leland Bohanan
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
new york city
the crisis
african
racial
William H. A. Moore: new york city, dusk songs, the crisis, james weldon johnson, harlem renaissance, city college of new york, columbia university, 1919 race riot. Otto Leland Bohanan: washington, d.c., new york city, the dawn’s awake!, the washer-woman, omega psi phi, howard university, the crisis, w. e. b. du bois.
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
William H. A. Moore
Otto Leland Bohanan
Emotional landscapes
William H. A. Moore: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Otto Leland Bohanan: Joy, Longing, Wonder.