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
James D. Corrothers
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 78%
Blended 78%
Swap sides
Another related pair
James David Corrothers entered the world on July 2, 1869, in Cass County, Michigan, a place where the winds off Lake Michigan carried echoes of freedom from the Underground Railroad routes that had once snaked through its forests and fields. He left it far too soon, on February 12, 1917, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, felled by a stroke at the age of forty-seven while serving a Presbyterian congregation. In the brief…
In time
William H. A. Moore
James D. Corrothers
1869
1960
They overlapped for 33 years (1885–1917).
When William H. A. Moore was born, James D. Corrothers was about 16.
William H. A. Moore was about 32 when James D. Corrothers died.
On the map
About 1,009 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Cass County, Michigan, USA. Shared ground: United States.
William H. A. Moore
James D. Corrothers
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
racial
chicago
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. James D. Corrothers: cass county, south haven, muskegon, t. thomas fortune, w. e. b. du bois, the black cat club, psalm of the race, the snapping of the bow.
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.
William H. A. Moore
James D. Corrothers
Emotional landscapes
William H. A. Moore: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. James D. Corrothers: Despair, Sorrow, Anger.