Joshua Henry Jones Jr. was born in 1876 in the sun-baked fields of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a place still echoing with the fragile hopes of Reconstruction. He died on December 14, 1955, in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of seventy-nine, his life a remarkable arc that carried him from the segregated South to the bustling intellectual and political circles of New England. A poet, novelist, composer, journalist, a…
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
Joshua Henry Jones
Poet B
Orrick Johns
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 72%
Poems 82%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
In time
Joshua Henry Jones
Orrick Johns
1876
1955
They overlapped for 60 years (1887–1946).
When Orrick Johns was born, Joshua Henry Jones was about 11.
Joshua Henry Jones was about 70 when Orrick Johns died.
On the map
About 1,007 km separate Orangeburg, South Carolina, USA from Sturgis, Michigan, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Joshua Henry Jones
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
Joshua Henry Jones: orangeburg, south carolina, boston, helen courtney, the heart of the world, dear old boston, james michael curley, poems of the four seas. Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition.
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.
Joshua Henry Jones
Orrick Johns
Emotional landscapes
Joshua Henry Jones: Wonder, Longing, Peace. Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.