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.
Raymond Garfield Dandridge emerged from the working-class streets of Cincinnati’s Price Hill neighborhood as one of the most resilient and distinctive voices in early twentieth-century African American poetry. Born around 1882 in a modest home that overlooked the rolling hills and river valleys of southern Ohio, he lived a life defined by both vibrant physical promise and profound physical limitation. By the time he…
“Tis good to make the best of it.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Death & Mortality, Harlem Renaissance, Social Justice Poets
Richard Henry Horne entered the world in London on the last day of 1802 (though he himself, with characteristic contrariness, sometimes gave the date as New Year's Day 1803), the son of James Horne, a quarter-master in the 61st Regiment of Foot. His father's military postings took the family to Guernsey, where they lived until James Horne's death in 1810 left the boy fatherless at the age of seven or eight. The young…
“The price of the present edition is one farthing, in order to bring it within the reach of the million.”
Neighbourhood:
Dramatic Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
They overlapped for 3 years (1882–1884).
When Raymond Garfield Dandridge was born, Richard Henry Horne was about 79.
Raymond Garfield Dandridge was about 2 when Richard Henry Horne died.
About 6,367 km separate
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA from
London, England.
Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Raymond Garfield Dandridge:
price hill, penciled poems, the poet and other poems, zalka peetruza, paul laurence dunbar, harlem renaissance, hemiplegia, ellen c. dandridge.
Richard Henry Horne:
london, guernsey, royal military college, orion, hecatompylos, elizabeth barrett browning, william howitt, cosmo de' medici.
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.