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.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alan Seeger
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…
“I wrote it in a few minutes, but it took me months to get it right.”
Alan Seeger was born in New York City on 22 June 1888, into an American family whose comfort, education, and international connections gave him unusual freedom while also placing before him the question of what a privileged young man ought to do with his life. He died on 4 July 1916, age twenty-eight, in the Battle of the Somme while serving in the French Foreign Legion. In the years between those dates he became, in…
“I have always been a fatalist.”
About 5,521 km separate Somersby, Lincolnshire, England from New York City, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses. Alan Seeger: new york city, battle of the somme, french foreign legion, i have a rendezvous with death, the torture of cuauhtemoc, charles seeger sr., elsie simmons adams seeger, pete seeger.
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.
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow. Alan Seeger: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.
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