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.
Charles Frederick White
Waverley Turner Carmichael
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Born in 1876 amid the lingering shadows of slavery in Tennessee, Charles Frederick White entered a world still scarred by the chains his parents had worn. The oldest of ten children born to formerly enslaved parents, he carried the weight of their hard-won freedom from the very beginning. His family soon migrated northward to Springfield, Illinois, seeking better opportunities in a state that had once sheltered Abrah…
“You would surely think this a wretched and ungrateful country.”
Waverley Turner Carmichael emerged from the red clay of Alabama’s Black Belt like a quiet song rising unbidden from the soil itself. Born in 1881 in the small community of Snow Hill, in Wilcox County, he would become one of the most authentic voices of rural African American life in the early twentieth century. His poetry, written in the rich dialect of the Southern Black folk he knew so intimately, captured the humo…
About 424 km separate Tennessee, USA from Snow Hill, Wilcox County, Alabama, 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.
Charles Frederick White: tennessee, springfield, plea of the negro soldier, spanish-american war, eighth illinois national guard, williston seminary, who's who in philadelphia, joseph sawyer. Waverley Turner Carmichael: alabama, snow hill, black belt, from the heart of a folk, james holly hanford, 92nd infantry division, buffaloes, world war i.
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.
Charles Frederick White: Anger, Sorrow, Despair. Waverley Turner Carmichael: Tenderness, Peace, Fear.
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