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.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Marianne Moore
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…
“Nothing is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Marianne Craig Moore emerged from the American Modernist movement as one of its most distinctive and enigmatic voices, a poet whose meticulous attention to detail and refusal to conform to conventional poetic forms revolutionized twentieth-century verse. Born on November 15, 1887, in Kirkwood, Missouri, and passing away on February 5, 1972, in New York City, Moore lived through nearly the entire span of modern Americ…
“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”
About 6,389 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland from Kirkwood, Missouri, 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.
Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes. Marianne Moore: kirkwood missouri, new york city, h.d., bryn mawr college, observations, the fish, the pangolin, poetry.
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.
Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder. Marianne Moore: Sorrow, Despair, Wonder.
Install V2Melody
Add a home-screen icon for quicker listening in a simple app window.