The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)

I find John Donne's poetry distinctly representative of the 17th century. It oscilates from being passionately sexual to passionately spiritual, and every detail seems to have been considered. The poems are augmented by Donne's allusions, but they are still beautiful to read without pondering the deeper meanings. I prefer the alphabetized format of this collection, since chronology and subject matter are fairly nebulous when it comes to Donne. The endnotes are brief enough for readers looking for something simple, but add enough interest that those with a more scholarly bent will have plenty to play with.

Finally, I've found a poet I really like reading. Donne's poems suit me more than Shakespeare's sonnets or Poe's verse, and apart from someone like Yvor Winters, I just don't get modern poetry (apologies to Sylvia Plath fans). What rings well with me is, well, ringing well! Reading a poem out loud with a bit of drama should just sound good. That's why rap and hip hop can really be considered poetry (well, some rap and hiphop anyway). A great example of this is Shakespeare's sonnet 129 (The expense of spirit in a waste of shame/Is lust in action; and till action, lust...). Most (not all) of Shakespeare's sonnets are harder to understand than this one, which is why they don't resonate with me as well as I'd like. Donne on the other hand is different; most of what he writes in English sounds good and is immediately understandable. Not that I understand everything in these poems, there are many contemporary allusions that are lost on me, but there's enough in there that sounds very good to allow me to right away enjoy myself. Here are two great lines, which open the sonnet "Community", to illustrate what I mean by good sound. Good we must love, and must hate ill, For ill is ill, and good good still... There are problems, themselves interesting, that bring discord to a poem. For instance in Donne's England "love" rhymed with "prove" but because today these words don't, a couplet with this rhyme is marred to our 21st century ears. A personal note: I was in bed reading "Soul Made Flesh" about the discovery that the brain is the seat of consciousness, made by Oxford scholars in 17th century England. I had reached an account of how large audiences of curious onlookers gathered to see doctors perform autopsies. I put the book down and decided to dip into Donne before going to sleep. I flipped out when I read The Damp's opening lines: When I am dead, and doctors know not why, And my friends' curiosity Will have me cut up to survey each part... Talk about serendipity! Now if I had just read an explanation of these lines in the notes, they would not have meant much to me. But because reading "Soul Made Flesh" had transported me into Donne's England for a few moments, the dramatic effect of the opening was multiplied immensely. In a nutshell, I find that I love Donne and I recommend this comprehensive easy-to-carry well-annotated edition. My only negative comment is that the editing is a bit unimaginative: the editor places the sonnets in alphabetical order of title simply because there is no accepted canonical ordering... Oh well. Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

The greatness of Donne is not simply in his violent yoking together of diverse realities in order to form complex new metaphorical wholes, but also in the deep passion and feeling of his confrontation with life's fundamental realities, Love and Death. Donne reasons with a passion and intensity, makes the very motion of mind one of deepest heart in a sublime, often mysterious and troubling language.

In my humble opinion, Donne was the greatest of the English poets. The sublime combination of the rhythms of human speech and classic meter, the eroticism of lyric, the passion that stirs within...Donne had no equal when it came to poeticism. Shakespeare, Shakespeare...you hack! There is a lot owing to this master poet. Let us recognize him; he is more deserving of our adulation.