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.
Eunice Tietjens
William Ernest Henley
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Eunice Tietjens was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 29 July 1884, into a city whose energy, contradictions, and cultural ambitions would shape the rest of her life. She died in the same city on 6 September 1944, after a career that had carried her across the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. During those sixty years, she became known not only as a poet but also as a journalist, traveler, lecturer, edito…
“I'm terribly homesick for Poetry and Chicago and you!”
William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…
“I venture, then, to hope that the result, for all its scrappiness, will be found to have that unity which comes of method and an honest regard for letters.”
About 6,205 km separate Chicago, Illinois, USA from Gloucester, 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.
Eunice Tietjens: chicago, the candle, profiles from china, the singing wood, the crossroads, harriet monroe, poetry magazine, imagism. William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.
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.
Eunice Tietjens: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.
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