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.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Langston Hughes
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois entered the world on February 23, 1868, in the small, rolling hills of Great Barrington, Massachusetts—a town where the air carried the crisp scent of New England pines and the quiet rhythms of rural life. Born into a family of mixed African, Dutch, and French Huguenot heritage, he was the son of Alfred Du Bois, a restless barber and laborer of Haitian descent who soon vanished from t…
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”
In the smoky jazz clubs of 1920s Harlem, where the saxophone's wail mingled with the clatter of typewriter keys, James Mercer Langston Hughes emerged as one of America's most vital poetic voices. Born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, and passing away on May 22, 1967, in New York City, Hughes spent his sixty-five years crafting a literary legacy that would fundamentally reshape American poetry and give voice…
“I loved the country I had grown up in. I was concerned with the problems and I came back here.”
About 1,892 km separate Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA from Joplin, Missouri, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: great barrington, alfred du bois, mary silvina burghardt, fisk university, the souls of black folk, double consciousness, color line, niagara movement. Langston Hughes: harlem renaissance, the weary blues, joplin, missouri, new york city, carrie mercer langston, mary patterson langston, not without laughter, scottsboro limited.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Langston Hughes: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.
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