Time's winged chariot and all that jazz. (Andrew Marvell: the Complete Poems)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Andrew Marvell: the Complete Poems
Date:	12/07/01 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: one really good poem.

Disadvantages: Most of his work isn't that memorable, it can be really hard to get in to.

Andrew marvel is one of the Metaphysical poets - a group who were not a conscious movement but who were about contemporary to Shakespeare. Other names include John Donne, George Herbert and Thomas Carrew. There are some others who might or might not belong with this set.

What is metaphysical poetry? The term was initially coined as an insult, a citicism of a grup of people with strange ideas and even stranger ways of expressign them. What typieifies these writers is their use of a technique called the conceit. A metaphor is saying something is something else "The fire was a raging demon locked in a prison or iron" "The man at the window was no more than a shadow, a whisp of smoke, a fragment of a long forgotten dream." Obviously none of these things are literaly true but they are great ways of representing concepts. The conceit goes one step further and doesn't mention the object - thus you can have an entire poem talking about a drop of dew on a rose bush and it be faily obvious that the poem is really all about something else altogether.

If you want to read Andrew marvel, it's well worth having a look at him in context - a collection of metaphysical poetry is a really interesting read, especially as these men were not working with any particular reference to each other.

Marvell is most famous for the poem "To his Coy Mistress" an appeal to a woman who is reluctant to have sex with him. It I a fantastic piece of seduction; "If we had world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime" it contains the unforgetable lines "For in the grave the worm will try that long preserved virginity" now there's a thought to keep you awake at night!

Durning my time as an English student, I read and studied at least a dozen of Marvell's poems, and it would be fair to say that "To his coy mistress" is the only one that made significant impact on me. Marvell is well wo
rth a look, but I fel that Donne and Herbert are by far the better poets.

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