Orrick Glenday Johns occupies a curious and fascinating position in American literary history. He was neither fully absorbed into the canon of the great modernists nor forgotten entirely by literary historians. Instead, he stands at the threshold between the nineteenth-century poetic tradition and the restless experimentation of the early twentieth century. His life and work reflect a moment of transition in American…
Compare Poets
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.
Poet A
Orrick Johns
Poet B
Charles Bertram Johnson
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 70%
Poems 84%
Blended 76%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Charles Bertram Johnson entered the world on October 5, 1880, in the small town of Callao, Missouri, a place where the rolling prairies of Macon County stretched under vast Midwestern skies, whispering promises and hardships in equal measure. He departed this life on March 20, 1958, at the age of seventy-seven, in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he was laid to rest in Longview Cemetery. His seventy-seven years spanne…
In time
Orrick Johns
Charles Bertram Johnson
1880
1958
They overlapped for 60 years (1887–1946).
When Orrick Johns was born, Charles Bertram Johnson was about 7.
Charles Bertram Johnson was about 66 when Orrick Johns died.
On the map
About 647 km separate Sturgis, Michigan, USA from Callao, Missouri, USA. Shared ground: United States.
Charles Bertram Johnson
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
From the biographies
Orrick Johns: sturgis, michigan, asphalt and other poems, university of michigan, romantic tradition, lyric sensitivity, modern urban life, philosophical reflection, nineteenth-century tradition. Charles Bertram Johnson: callao, missouri, jefferson city, longview cemetery, paul laurence dunbar, songs of my people, the mantle of dunbar, lincoln school, moberly, missouri.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Orrick Johns
Charles Bertram Johnson
Emotional landscapes
Orrick Johns: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Charles Bertram Johnson: Spirituality, Peace, Longing.