Product Description

This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many of his private letters; Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53463 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-14
• Released on: 2001-08-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375757341
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"When Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into True-love knots." -- Review

Review
"When Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into True-love knots."

From the Inside Flap

This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many of his private letters; Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "to submit to the sound of that passionate and penetrating voice, and his figure rises again across the waste of the years more erect, more imperious, more inscrutable than any of his time."

Customer Reviews

Ask not to whom this book calls; it calls to thee...
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.

Plees updeight th' speling for moderne readeres
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.

Donne, the greater poet
As the years go by, and my range of knowledge grows, I find myself being drawn back again and again to John Donne. Unlike one of the previous reviewers, I do share his religion and even practice a more modern version of his denomination. Still there is something more there. As far as comparing Donne with Eliot, although I think Eliot was a great poet, there is more depth of feeling in Donne's work. However, one must consider that Eliot put his wife away (literally) when she became an embarassment because her mental problems. Since these turned out to be hormonally driven, this betrayal is all the more tragic. Donne, on the other hand, after years of carousing, found his soul mate and his one true love and continued to be devoted to her years after she died. As great as this love was, his writings show that, although he was afraid to trust the promises made by his God, he loved him even more. Now, that is devotion and that is the root of wonderful and beautiful thoughts he put to paper.