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.
Charles Dickens
Gerard Manley Hopkins
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in a modest terraced house at 1 Mile End Terrace in Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. The second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens, his arrival came during a time of naval activity and modest aspirations in a bustling port town. His father, John, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was a genial, improvident man whose love for literature,…
“We owe them a debt which we ought to pay.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, which has since been absorbed into the bustling expanse of Greater London. He entered the world as the eldest of what would become nine children in a prosperous, artistic, and devout High Church Anglican family. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a successful marine insurance adjuster who also served as the Hawaiian consul-general in London and dabble…
“Sprung rhythm is measured by feet of from one to four syllables, regularly, and the feet are either trochees or dactyls.”
About 185 km separate Portsmouth, Hampshire, England from Stratford, Essex, 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.
Charles Dickens: portsmouth, chatham, catherine hogarth, oliver twist, the pickwick papers, sketches by boz, bleak house, great expectations. Gerard Manley Hopkins: stratford, essex, robert bridges, the wreck of the deutschland, sprung rhythm, oxford movement, john henry newman, society of jesus, terrible sonnets.
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.
Charles Dickens: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.
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