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.
Strickland Gillilan
Arthur Davison Ficke
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strickland Gillilan was born on 21 September 1869 in Jackson County, Ohio, a region whose rural rhythms, small-town sociability, and vigorous political culture supplied much of the material from which he would make a career. He died on 25 April 1954 in Baltimore, Maryland, after a long life spent as a journalist, lecturer, humorist, versifier, and public entertainer. In the literary histories that privilege modernism…
“Successfully entertaining talks are my merchandise.”
Arthur Davison Ficke was born in Davenport, Iowa, on 10 November 1883, at a moment when the United States was rapidly becoming both an industrial power and a more self-conscious literary nation. He died on 30 November 1945, at the age of sixty-two, leaving a body of poetry that can seem difficult to classify neatly. He was at once a disciplined maker of sonnets, a cosmopolitan traveler, a student of Asian cultures, a…
“Beauty does not reside in perfection, but in the intensity with which a moment is captured.”
About 731 km separate Jackson County, Ohio, USA from Davenport, Iowa, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Strickland Gillilan: jackson county, baltimore, the reading mother, including finnigin, sunshine and awkwardness, humorist, newspaper-minded poet, public entertainer. Arthur Davison Ficke: davenport, iowa, spectra hoax, witter bynner, anne knish, harvard university, the breaking of bonds, sonnets of a portrait-painter.
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.
Strickland Gillilan: Joy, Wonder, Irony. Arthur Davison Ficke: Fear, Sorrow, Wonder.
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