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
John Oldham
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.”
There is something peculiarly poignant about a poet who burns with such fierce satirical energy, who seems to embody the very spirit of angry, impatient youth, and who then dies at thirty years old — as if the intensity of the flame had consumed the wick. John Oldham lived only three decades, yet in that brief span he produced a body of work remarkable for its ferocity, its metrical daring, and its willingness to dra…
“Lord of myself, accountable to none, but to my conscience, and my God alone.”
About 143 km separate Devon, England from Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, 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.
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. John Oldham: shipton moyne, john dryden, satyrs upon the jesuits, restoration period, tetbury grammar school, st edmund hall, oxford, popish plot.
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. John Oldham: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality.
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