John Donne

[Anonymous No.22246946]

Why is he considered among the greats of English poetry? What's the appeal?
His command of meter is clumsy and his imagery is poor, especially in his love poems.
His poems that are neither religious nor erotic nor related to love are even clumsier and come off as cold even when they're addressed to people he knew. The subject matter of his satires have been done better by better poets.

His only genuinely great poems are the Holy Sonnets and the Metempsychosis, but even his religious lyric poems have an awkward prosody and feel more like dramatic monologues or translations of the psalms than English poems. Marvell, Herbert, Milton, and Hopkins have all done religious poetry better.

It's like he read from Shakespeare but only took influence from his blank-verse soliloquys that weren't imagery-laden, had prosodic highs, or had extended metaphors.

[Anonymous No.22247212]

>>22246946
I liked The Flea and A Burnt Ship very much

[Anonymous No.22248189]

>>22246946
Bump

[Anonymous No.22248205]

>>22248189
>Bump
Bump bump bump contribute or die you fucking retard
>but I'm OP!!!!
I don't give a shit. Elaborate on your fucking argument.

[Anonymous No.22248222]

>>22246946
He's possibly the most brilliant coiner of metaphors and images in English poetry, and one of the cleverest and wittiest authors in the language. I agree that his metre can be rough at times, and I do prefer Marvell in that regard, but in the respects above there is no one better than him except perhaps Shakespeare. If you can't enjoy the striking images, the clean, intelligent logical argument, the directness and heartfelt personal touch and in a poem like The Broken Heart, I don't know what to say.

He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

[Anonymous No.22248702]

>>22248222
Not OP, but I haven't read much of Donne before, but this poem is great! Especially the 3rd stanza, the first 4 lines of it. I smiled like a child at those lines, I didn't expect them, but it so impressed me. Thank you, anon. I should read more poetry.

[Anonymous No.22248742]

>>22248222
Someone help me out with lines 2-4.
Anyone who's been in love for even one hour is mad to say it soon decays, because in even less than an hour it's powerful enough to make 10 men fall in love?
I don't quite follow his grammar wrt to the juxtaposition he draws between which part is mad to say, but I think I've got it thank you in advance.

[Anonymous No.22249786]

My true love hath my heart and I have hers:
We swapped last Tuesday and we felt elated
But now, whenever one of us refers
To "my heart," things get rather complicated.

[Anonymous No.22249816]

>>22246946
A lot of the old authors are famous just because they wrote stuff when other people didn't

[Anonymous No.22249910]

>>22246946
>The Antiquary

If in his study he hath so much care
To hang all old strange things, let his wife beware.

[Anonymous No.22249991]

>>22248222
I'd say the Broken Heart or The Blossom are exceptions to the rule. There are plenty of instances where Donne uses clichés or renders what would otherwise be generic prose into verse. Where there aren't cliches, Donne's imagery is original, but of a very weird and unpoetic kind. Only Donne could compare lovers to a compass. Dryden was right to say that metaphysical expression was out of place in love poetry.
Was he witty? Certainly, but I have doubts about his artistry.

Donne's influence can also be traced in poems like >>22249786

[Anonymous No.22250001]

>>22249991
Can you give an example of a cliché from Songs and Sonnets?

[Anonymous No.22251657]

>>22246946
Donne does seem to be writing from an older tradition of English poetry (think of Wyatt) that was much more clumsy in its use of meter and focused much more in rhetoric and argumentation (which is why I assume you think he took from Shakespeare blank-verse soliloquys). Donne's great innovation is that he was able, probably thanks to what the petrarchists had done to the English language, to purify that older tradition and give it an intensity that was not possible then; this is why Donne is much more a verse poet (Wyatt's verses by themselves do not work very well while Donnes' verses by themselves are very luminous; imo his biggest problem is that sometimes his poems do not live up to the strength of its first verses) than a poem poet, if that makes sense. He also infused a sense of levity and non-seriousness to his poetry that other poets in his tradition simply didn't have.
> his imagery is poor
Do not agree! His imagery is violent and non-reasonable, and there lies precisely its power. This is what >>22248222 talks about. Except his arguments are anything but logical or clean (his argumentation is often messy, really), and Donne himself was aware of this (as The Flea shows). This is also not something that works against but for his poetry, and from this stems the levity I talked about. If you want good and clear arguments go to the early renaissance poets.
Eliot probably understood the power of Donne's metaphors best and I think only by his influence was he able to write this:
>When the evening is spread out against the sky
>Like a patient etherized upon a table
I also believe that Donne is the greatest erotic poet out of all English literature. No good arguments for this. I just feel that a poem like To his mistress going to bed speaks for itself…

[Anonymous No.22251727]

>tell me you're a love poet without telling me

[Anonymous No.22252928]

>>22251657
Good post. I can't imagine the OP is being anything other than willfully obtuse pretending not to understand the "appeal" of one of the most highly specialized poets in the language - if you don't go in for the gimmick fine, but it would take an uncommonly conventional mind to truly not "get it" by sheer force of inability to understand poetry except through the lens of a few categorized power levels. As is often the case though the thread is still a net benefit to the board because it results in actual discussion of literature. I've recently enjoyed rereading The Canonization, Air and Angels, and Forbidding Mourning, I need to spend a lot more time with him though, I was too young when I read him so a lot of it went fully over my head.

[Anonymous No.22253784]

>>22248742
Yeah, you basically got the meaning.
>>22252928
For reference, I'm a stickler for Elizabethan poetry's command of sound and sense, especially for people with a control of meter so precise like Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Golding, that you could read them to learn how scansion works.
Donne's style with tis unconventional imagery and cadence is a bit off-putting to me, so it's probably a taste thing. That and I'm a bit wary of Metaphysical poetry more generally.

[Anonymous No.22254060]

He's certainly something. I love how in a single poem of his we go from peak lyricism:
>She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou knowest this,
>Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is
(...)
>She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou know'st this,
>Thou know'st how lame a cripple this world is
To alleyway versifier garbage such as this:
>So did the world from the first hour decay,
>That evening was beginning of the day,
>And now the springs and summers which we see,
>Like sons of women after fifty be.

[Anonymous No.22254268]

>If our loves faint, and westwardly decline,
>To me thou, falsely, thine,
>And I to thee mine actions shall disguise.

Uhh, yeah. I think I'm with Sam Johnson on this one.