Home > Books & Magazines > Printed Book >

Complete English Poems - John Donne

Description: ISBN 1857150058 / Author: John Donne / Genre: Drama / Poetry / Criticism

Newest Review: ... is one of the few great poets I know that benefits from you knowing a bit about the setting he's writing in. Yes, his ... more

... verse speaks for itself, and I'll come to all that later, but, because it's also so clever, so witty, and so darned contemporary, I just want to do a bit of the history, since it really does make reading him more fulfilling. This is potted history, too, so, historians, wince now, and blench later, because you'll hate this. John Donne was born in 1572 (the same year as Ben Jonson), and before 'Othello' has been performed. Courtly men are wearing huge ruffs, fancy tights, and richly embroidered jerki...more

Read Reviews for Complete English Poems - John ...

Complete English Poems - John Donne: Base metal to Gold (1895 words)
by - written on 27/08/01 (Very useful, 648 readings)
Rating:

Passion. That's what I first think of when I see Donne, but it's an intellectual, as well as a physical passion. It's a passion where ideas are explored, and which is governed by the head, as well as driven by the heart. It's an uneasy passion, always looking at it's own end, and even in his sonnets, endowed with an extreme urgency, becuase we know the end will come, the scales will fall, and age and death will triumph, because they have to. That makes Donne sound terribly depressing, but he isn't. He isn't because he juxtaposes ideas together so cleverly, and uses the new scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century to explore ... Read the complete review