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
George Henry Boker
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…
“Bisogna fare della propria vita come si fa un’opera d’arte.”
In the glittering literary salons of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, where gas lamps cast their warm glow over earnest conversations about poetry and politics, one figure stood at the intersection of art and public service with uncommon grace. George Henry Boker was born on October 6, 1823, into a world of privilege and promise that would shape his destiny as one of America's most accomplished—if underappreciated—po…
“I hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if there were no other land in which I could live.”
About 7,096 km separate Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy from Camden, New Jersey, 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.
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. George Henry Boker: philadelphia, the book of the dead, the lessons of life, calaynos, francesca da rimini, bayard taylor, richard henry stoddard, union league club.
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. George Henry Boker: Sorrow, Despair, Fear.
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