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John Donne: Selected Poems (Bloomsbury Poetry Classics)

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This book's editor Andrews Wanning provides a good short introduction to the poetry of Donne. He begins by surveying the ups and downs of Donne's reputation. Dr. Johnson did not find a high place for him and he was not celebrated for a long- time. The pioneering scholarship of Herbert Grierson who published in 1912 an edition of the poetry, and above all the re-evalutation of T.S. Eliot made Donne into a central figure of the Tradition. Donne's poetry was worshipped in the world of Critical opinion which Eliot for more than half-a- century set the tone in.
Donne is a complicated, difficult and remarkably original poet. He is a poet of strong feeling and argument. His poems seem to lay out a line of thought which the reader must stay with through hard mental effort. Along with this the great innovation of the Metaphysical Poets of which Donne was the chief was that linking together violently of worlds of experience which were not ordinarily associated. This adventure of Mind gives Donne's poetry a quality of excitement, newness and interest.
This volume contains the poems Donne is most known for, the early love poems,the Holy Sonnets, Epigrams,Elegies,Anniversaries,Epithalmio0n, Divine poems, Anniversaries.
There are endnotes but they are scanty. With a poet like Donne one needs a lot of help, and for those who really want to understand him a more comprehensive critical edition is recommended.
But the great poems are here.
I would only add as a minor note that while I recognize the distinctive power of Donne's poetry it does not hold me or move me in the way that of Shakespeare Wordsworth Keats Hopkins Stevens do. The music is not there for me in the same way. But I am only one reader, and other readers think otherwise.

Without a good grounding in the life of his times, Donne can be a bit of a puzzle to the casual reader. Luckily, this excellent recording of a broad selection of his oeuvre includes not only superb readings by a fine team of British actor-readers, but also commentary about the poet's life. Particular favourites: The Flea and To His Mistris... Really beautifully done (if you'll forgive the pun).