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.
Gabriele D'Annunzio
A. Mary F. Robinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
On March 12, 1863, in the coastal city of Pescara in the Abruzzi region of Italy, a child was born who would come to embody the restless, turbulent spirit of his age like no other writer of his generation. Baptized Gaetano, he would forever be known by the name his family gave him in childhood—Gabriele—a name that seemed to foreshadow the angelic, almost otherworldly presence he would project throughout his life. Gab…
“Memento audere semper.”
Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…
“The chapel of the Minor Poet may be too small to admit the crowd; it may be thronged when three or four are gathered together. None the less, it has its use and place.”
About 1,608 km separate Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. 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.
Gabriele D'Annunzio: pescara, abruzzi, maria hardouin di gallese, eleonora duse, il piacere, canto novo, laudi del cielo del mare della terra e degli eroi, alcyone. A. Mary F. Robinson: leamington spa, aurillac, madame darmesteter, madame duclaux, a handful of honeysuckle, the new arcadia, emily brontë, james darmesteter.
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.
Gabriele D'Annunzio: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing. A. Mary F. Robinson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.
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