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.
Thomas d'Urfey
Aphra Behn
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Thomas d’Urfey, born about 1653 and dead on 26 February 1723, was one of the most tireless entertainers in English literary history: a playwright, lyricist, ballad-writer, compiler, performer, political satirist, and convivial public personality whose career stretched from the high Restoration of Charles II to the early Hanoverian age. He has seldom occupied the first rank in conventional histories of English literat…
“The town may da-da-damn me as a poet, but they sing my songs for all that.”
Aphra Behn, born around 1640 and dead on 16 April 1689, occupies a singular position in English literary history: she was a successful Restoration playwright, a daring poet, an innovator in prose fiction, a political writer, and, most importantly for later generations, a woman who openly made writing her profession. Her precise origins remain uncertain, a fact that has invited both scholarly caution and romantic spec…
“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero.”
About 326 km separate Devon, England from Wye, Kent, England. Both have ground in London.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Thomas d'Urfey: exeter, charles ii, james butler, the siege of memphis, madam fickle, a fond husband, squire oldsapp, the comical history of don quixote. Aphra Behn: restoration playwright, surinam, oroonoko, the rover, the forc'd marriage, astrea, willmore, charles ii.
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.
Thomas d'Urfey: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder. Aphra Behn: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.