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.
Edwin Arlington Robinson stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in American poetry. Renowned for his psychologically nuanced portraits, precise craftsmanship, and unflinching explorations of the human condition, Robinson’s work bridges the 19th and 20th centuries, offering both the rigor of tradition and the insights of modernity. His journey from the small towns of Maine to the literary heights…
“To be ambitious of becoming a great man is the first step towards becoming a little man.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets
In the pantheon of early twentieth-century British poetry, certain voices echo through the decades with enduring resonance, while others fade into the margins of literary history despite their once-prominent positions. Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols belongs to this latter category—a poet whose name once commanded respect in literary circles, whose work appeared alongside that of his more famous contemporaries, yet whos…
“I remember I nodded, for further acquaintance with war inclines me to his opinion.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, War Poets
They overlapped for 43 years (1893–1935).
When Robert Nichols was born, Edwin Arlington Robinson was about 24.
Robert Nichols was about 42 when Edwin Arlington Robinson died.
About 5,019 km separate
Head Tide, Maine, USA from
Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England.
Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Edwin Arlington Robinson:
head tide maine, gardiner maine, tilbury town, the torrent and the night before, the children of the night, richard cory, miniver cheevy, the man against the sky.
Robert Nichols:
shanklin, isle of wight, john bowyer buchanan nichols, mary catherine nichols, invocation: war poems and others, aurelia and other poems, w.b. yeats, georgian poets.
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.
