No poet has been more wilfully contradictory than John Donne, whose works forge unforgettable connections between extremes of passion and mental energy. From satire to tender elegy, from sacred devotion to lust, he conveys an astonishing range of emotions and poetic moods. Constant in his work, however, is an intensity of feeling and expression and complexity of argument that is as evident in religious meditations such as 'Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward' as it is in secular love poems such as 'The Sun Rising' or 'The Flea'. 'The intricacy and subtlety of his imagination are the length and depth of the furrow made by his passion,' wrote Yeats, pinpointing the unique genius of a poet who combined ardour and intellect in equal measure.
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About the Author
John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572. After a conventional education at Hart Hall, Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, he took part in the Earl of Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. He secretly married Anne More in December 1601 and was imprisoned by her father, Sir George, in the Fleet two months later. He was ordained priest in January 1615 and took a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge the same year. He was made Dean of St Paul's in London in 1621, a position he held until his death in 1631. He is famous for the sermons he preached in his later years, as well as for his poems. A.J. Smith was Professor Emeritus of the University of Southampton. His book include Literary Love (1983) and Metaphysical Wit (1992). He died in Salisbury in 1991.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book,
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This review is from: The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
I am greatly enjoying this book. The notes at the end explain some of Donne's more obscure imagery. A potentially controversial choice by the editor was to change the spelling of many words to more modern forms, which makes the poems easier to read at the expense of authenticity. Some people will like that and some people won't. Another odd choice was to list the poems in alphabetical order, instead of grouping them by subject matter or attemp to list them in approxiamte chronolgical order.Buy this book and enjoy the breathtaking poems. You could do a lot worse with your time.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoying poetry that sounds good when read out loud,
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This review is from: The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Finally, I've found a poet I really like reading. Donne's poems suit me more than Shakespeare's sonnets or Poe's verse, and apart from someone like Yvor Winters, I just don't get modern poetry (apologies to Sylvia Plath fans).What rings well with me is, well, ringing well! Reading a poem out loud with a bit of drama should just sound good. That's why rap and hip hop can really be considered poetry (well, some rap and hiphop anyway). A great example of this is Shakespeare's sonnet 129 (The expense of spirit in a waste of shame/Is lust in action; and till action, lust...). Most (not all) of Shakespeare's sonnets are harder to understand than this one, which is why they don't resonate with me as well as I'd like. Donne on the other hand is different; most of what he writes in English sounds good and is immediately understandable. Not that I understand everything in these poems, there are many contemporary allusions that are lost on me, but there's enough in there that sounds very good to allow me to right away enjoy myself. Here are two great lines, which open the sonnet "Community", to illustrate what I mean by good sound. Good we must love, and must hate ill, For ill is ill, and good good still... There are problems, themselves interesting, that bring discord to a poem. For instance in Donne's England "love" rhymed with "prove" but because today these words don't, a couplet with this rhyme is marred to our 21st century ears. A personal note: I was in bed reading "Soul Made Flesh" about the discovery that the brain is the seat of consciousness, made by Oxford scholars in 17th century England. I had reached an account of how large audiences of curious onlookers gathered to see doctors perform autopsies. I put the book down and decided to dip into Donne before going to sleep. I flipped out when I read The Damp's opening lines: When I am dead, and doctors know not why, And my friends' curiosity Will have me cut up to survey each part... Talk about serendipity! Now if I had just read an explanation of these lines in the notes, they would not have meant much to me. But because reading "Soul Made Flesh" had transported me into Donne's England for a few moments, the dramatic effect of the opening was multiplied immensely. In a nutshell, I find that I love Donne and I recommend this comprehensive easy-to-carry well-annotated edition. My only negative comment is that the editing is a bit unimaginative: the editor places the sonnets in alphabetical order of title simply because there is no accepted canonical ordering... Oh well. Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fabulous Collection,
This review is from: The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
This is a wonderful collection of Donne's poetry. It's excellent for any reader, experienced and first-timers alike. Even with no previous exposure to Donne, this collection offers extensive introductions and footnotes for all of collections contained in this book. And for more experienced Donne readers, this collection really is complete. Excellent for collectors, students, readers, and newcomers.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing I did see, But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too, And therefore what thou wert, and who I bid love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inflaming eyes, specular stone, hard deeds, thou forgive, forbidding mourning New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be; Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing I did see, But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too, And therefore what thou wert, and who I bid love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inflaming eyes, specular stone, hard deeds, thou forgive, forbidding mourning New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
100
books
cite this book:
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- Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts by Laurie Shannon on 5 pages
- The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture) by Linda Gregerson on page 170, page 256, and Back Matter
- Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England by Stephen B. Dobranski on page 119, page 120, and page 136
- Aspects of Love in John Gower's Confessio Amantis (Studies in Medieval History and Culture) by Ellen S. Bakalian in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Military Honour and the Conduct of War: From Ancient Greece to Iraq (Cass Military Studies) by Paul Robinson on page 107, and Back Matter
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