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.
John Bunyan
Thomas Flatman
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
John Bunyan, baptized on 30 November 1628 and dead on 31 August 1688, rose from the working life of rural Bedfordshire to become one of the most influential English religious writers of all time. Though he is best known as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book whose characters and phrases entered the language of generations of readers, Bunyan was also a preacher, controversialist, autobiographer, pastor, poet,…
“The soul of religion is the practical part.”
Thomas Flatman was born on 21 February 1635 in London, probably in or near Aldersgate Street, though older accounts also associate his family with Red Cross Street. He died on 8 December 1688 in Three-leg Alley, in the parish of St. Bride’s, London, and was buried there. His name is not usually placed beside those of John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, or the Earl of Rochester, yet Flatman is an unusually revea…
About 76 km separate Elstow, Bedfordshire, England from Deptford, London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
John Bunyan: bedfordshire, elstow, the pilgrim’s progress, grace abounding to the chief of sinners, english civil war, john gifford, tinker, baptism by immersion. Thomas Flatman: london, aldersgate street, three-leg alley, winchester college, new college oxford, royalist, anglican, poems and songs.
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.
John Bunyan: Spirituality, Peace, Joy. Thomas Flatman: Sorrow, Despair, Fear.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.