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
William Morris
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…
“Io ho quel che ho donato.”
The life of William Morris presents one of the most remarkable and multifaceted careers in Victorian literature and culture. Born on March 24, 1834, in Walthamstow, Essex, and dying on October 3, 1896, in Hammersmith, London, Morris packed into his sixty-two years an astonishing array of accomplishments as poet, designer, craftsman, printer, translator, socialist activist, and visionary. He remains a figure who defie…
“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
About 1,474 km separate Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy from Lambeth, London, 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. William Morris: walthamstow, hammersmith, edward burne-jones, the defence of guenevere, the haystack in the floods, the life and death of jason, the earthly paradise, sigurd the volsung.
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. William Morris: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow.
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