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Summary: classy courtly love poems and musings on God
Review: Although I care less about his prose, John Donne wrote some very impressive and intuitive so-called love poetry, as well as religious poems that I like. A master of metaphor, he also shows great range of emotions, insight, and passion. My favorite work is his "divine poems" and his "songs and sonnets". Some really beautiful use of language and wise "deep" sentiments. The elegies also have some wonderful lines. David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"
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Summary: Plees updeight th' speling for moderne readeres
Review: I agree with all the positive things said about Donne on this page. Also, this book's great strength is its breadth, including poems, letters, sermons, and other writings of Donne. One gets all the poems and most of his available prose. The only difficulty I had is that all of the poems are presented without any effort to modernize the spelling of words. Often, this distracts from a more perfect enjoyment of Donne's wit, sentiment, conceits and emotions. For those who might find antiquated spelling a distraction, I recommend they find another edition.
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Summary: CANONIZED FOR LOVE
Review: In John Donne, the artist and man, we have a many-faceted gem. What moves me most about him, who in my view has no superiors among English poets, is that wherever he speaks from, the most sensually playful to the most solemnly prayerful (the two are often inseparable), he is always so openly, deeply engaged. His unsurpassed verbal ability is always so immediately in touch with his perception so that his language moves and lives with the mysterious life of perception itself. Even when he is most elaborately inventive and involved, he is never contrived or remote, he is always fully there. His art is fed and shaped by his perception and his perception is always so fresh and penetrating, so uninhibited by assumption and convention and yet wherever he travels he is somehow always so available to the sincere reader. For me this all bespeaks a sensitive, large, generous soul. It is always so self-aware, but never self-centered, and even when weak and mortally distressed it is still deep and rich, never thin, sour, bitter. A very lovable soul.
Often one finds references to T. S. Eliot when people speak or write about Donne. For me, the references are usually facile and Donne is clearly the greater figure. It says much to me that I love him dearly though I do not share his religious belief. I respect Eliot, but I find it much more difficult to love him and often even to locate him. He is too cold and artificially remote in comparison and I do not accept the validity of his 'impersonal transcendence'. I am not saying that Eliot should have tried to be more in touch with the reader, that is a silly idea and never a real concern for a genuine artist. I am saying that he should have tried to be more in touch with himself. He is in reality no more inwardly complex or many-faced than Donne, and certainly not more profound, but by comparison he seems cold, fragmented and stagnant to me and simply more inclined to wear his sweat on his sleeve. I know that some might say that Eliot had more difficult times and trials to deal with than did Donne, but I think that anyone who familiarizes himself with the wide range of Donne's work, and this volume from The Modern Library makes that possible, will see this is simply not true. Any one who is not familiar with Donne's work is unaware of some of the deepest, richest, vivifying depths that English language art has reached. It has something to do with love of which Donne knew much.
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Summary: Donne... Greatest Romantic Writer... Here's Proof
Review: John Donne is said to have been one of the greatest, if not THE greatest romantic poets in history... This book chronicles Donne's writing and the changes his writing underwent as the writer himself was changed from a womanizing play boy into a converted man of God...
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Summary: Ask not to whom this book calls; it calls to thee...
Review: Metaphysical poets were not all randy adolescents, but beneath the sensuous seduction of Donne's love poetry can be felt the endearing ingenuity of a cad. Combined with the powerful sincerity of his religious poems and divine meditations, the wit and intensity of a sensitive and naked poet become vivid. Donne wrote to be read by friends and this intimacy is apparent - there is a strong sense of being enclosed in the same room as the poet in a rare meditation. Donne is important both in igniting religous poetry and as a precursor to poets such as T S Eliot, but more importantly he is one of the greatest individual poets in the language. His 'unclassical' roughness which threatened him with obscurity now speaks clearly of his profound force of feeling blazing into thought. This book would be enriching for anyone who loves poetry, religion, love or pretty much anything else.
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Summary: As Usual, Modern Library Series Succeeds
Review: This volume is a wonderful selection of Donne's prose, and is especially useful for the various sermons included. John Donne is a brilliant poet whose skillful use of language and understanding of the paradoxes of Christianity are a delight. To have the entire range of his poetry, pre- and post-conversion, is very useful. A great reference tool for the student of literature, and a good read (Oxford English dictionary readily accessible, of course).
Rating:
Summary: As Usual, Modern Library Series Succeeds
Review: This volume is a wonderful selection of Donne's prose, and is especially useful for the various sermons included. John Donne is a brilliant poet whose skillful use of language and understanding of the paradoxes of Christianity are a delight. To have the entire range of his poetry, pre- and post-conversion, is very useful. A great reference tool for the student of literature, and a good read (Oxford English dictionary readily accessible, of course).
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