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Poems (Highbridge Classics)

by John Donne

4.14 · rating details · 1,184 ratings · 36 reviews

This collection of Donne's work runs the gamut of the poet's many areas of brilliance: from love songs to religious hymns, from heartfelt elegies to holy sonnets. It includes some of his best-loved poems, including "Goe, and catche a falling starre," Loves Growthe" and "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," as well as his religious and philosophical...more

Audio CD, 135 pages

Published June 20th 2006 by Highbridge Audio (first published 1634)

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Dec 13, 2007

Keely rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, reviewed

What is it that infects the iconoclasts? What is it unrelenting that they cannot be the same?

John Donne was a man who straddled the channel. To be English and Catholic was to never have an identity. Sometimes it troubled him, but to be no one man became his greatest gift. There are those who are never forced to look beyond their place and their lives. That place itself may be challanged, and success is never assured, but to strive to become someone out of being so strongly no-one is ...moreWhat is it that infects the iconoclasts? What is it unrelenting that they cannot be the same?

John Donne was a man who straddled the channel. To be English and Catholic was to never have an identity. Sometimes it troubled him, but to be no one man became his greatest gift. There are those who are never forced to look beyond their place and their lives. That place itself may be challanged, and success is never assured, but to strive to become someone out of being so strongly no-one is another type of success.

It taught him joy in the world. It taught him of the simplicity of joy: that it is always a small thing and turns about and about on a single word. It stretched him out along a continuum with two opposing sides that could never be opposite concepts, and only found their conflict in the blood and flesh of men.

I might say it is no wonder that he was the man who tried to imagine a speck of dust that spans the universe. I might say it, but it would not be true: Donne is a wonder; and he is a wonderer. In that sense, he creates himself. He may be this, or he may be its opposite. That he was born a Catholic and died the Anglican Priest of St. Paul's Cathedral is not the showing of a change of identity, but rather a simple turn of phrase.

Why shouldn't a poet's life be a poem? We might ask what mark could stand betwixt the caesura of a man's change of heart. The mark is Metaphysics, which has doggedly followed him ever since.

There is a Shakespearean accessibility to Donne, in that he never places himself squarely behind any particular idea. Indeed, he is defined by his ability to question more than answer. He also bears some resemblance to the bard in his use of low humor, which combines with his holy works to span most of human experience.

However, there is often little accessible about his conceits, which are complex, intellectual, and many-layered. Unlike Shakespeare, Donne tends to challenge the reader (though the argument of medium may stand here). Like Pope, there is the sense that Donne is sharing a joke with you, and there is satisfaction in it. However, it is often less likely to be (entirely) a joke as a conceptual and philosophical exploration.

Taking his cues from the consummate Petrarch, Donne builds a language and a world of poetry like the crafting of a philosophy. However, finding himself too uninhibited to match the singular drive and form of Petrarch, Donne leaves us instead an open book, where every confirmation undermines itself, and to withhold becomes, itself, a passion.(less)

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May 30, 2010

Kira rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

Джон Донн «Блоха» («The Flea») перевод Бродского

Узри в блохе, что мирно льнет к стене,
В сколь малом ты отказываешь мне.
Кровь поровну пила она из нас:
Твоя с моей в ней смешаны сейчас.
Но этого ведь мы не назовем
Грехом, потерей девственности, злом.
Блоха, от крови смешанной пьяна,
Пред вечным сном насытилась сполна;
Достигла больше нашего она.

Узри же в ней три жизни и почти
Ее вниманьем. И...more

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Nov 29, 2007

Sean rated it

· review of another edition

Jack the Rake's poems get me hotter than the kitchen oven, but then I turn to the end of the book and I'm broken, blown (?!) burned, and made new again by some serious holiness.

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Feb 23, 2010

Derek rated it

· review of another edition

Let me start by saying I enjoyed John Donne’s Holy Sonnets as much as his sexy romps, and I hope to discuss both (as well as the less interesting verse letters and songs) with equal fervency and attention, but for now I want to talk just about the sexy romps.

Mostly, Donne is a hoot, a dirty dawg. In Elegy 4, the narrator decides he will be more moral by refusing sex with a married woman in her husband’s bed and instead – here’s a great improvement – finding a different bed in a diffe...moreLet me start by saying I enjoyed John Donne’s Holy Sonnets as much as his sexy romps, and I hope to discuss both (as well as the less interesting verse letters and songs) with equal fervency and attention, but for now I want to talk just about the sexy romps.

Mostly, Donne is a hoot, a dirty dawg. In Elegy 4, the narrator decides he will be more moral by refusing sex with a married woman in her husband’s bed and instead – here’s a great improvement – finding a different bed in a different house in which to sleep with her. In Elegy 6, the narrator basically tells a virgin woman, “If we have sex now it won’t hurt so much with your husband later on, whenever he comes along.” (33). In Elegy 7, the narrator says he will serve his country better by staying home and having sex with his wife than going off to war. Elegy 8 is all kink, snuff, and keepin’ it rough, a veritable striptease, if you will; the man on the bed with the school-girl fetish gives the woman before him both elevator eyes (up and down) and X-ray eyes (in and out) and does so through the lens of sexual colonialism, the woman’s body a land to be conquered. If I asked my secondary students to translate any one of Donne’s elegies into contemporary language, as I have asked them to do with Romeo & Juliet in the past, I would first close-read my district’s curriculum guide and my union contract.

The poetry is definitely explicit. This is not to say it isn’t or can’t be romantic. In Elegy 14, Donne writes, “So we her airs contemplate, words and heart / And virtues; but we love the centric part… / Her swelling lips, to which when we are come / We anchor there, and think ourselves at home… / And sailing towards her India, in that way / Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay” (43). Romantic, right? I thought so, but then the dawg ruins the romance (or rather, transforms it into bar talk) with an OMG-did-he-say-that-about-a-woman? punch: “Thou shalt upon another forest set / Where some do shipwreck, and no further get. / When thou art there, consider what this chase / Misspent by thy beginning at the face” (43). That’s right: Why waste time lingering on a woman’s face? For this narrator’s voyage, true north is the southern part of the body. The woman’s brain and eyes and mouth are not body parts worth visiting. Odysseus longed for Penelope because he wanted to copulate, not converse.

Donne has a knack for being explicit on one page and then ethereal on another. On page seven he writes of the goal “To out-swive dildos, and out-usure Jews”; two pages later he’s analyzing the syntax of the Bible: “Each day his beads, but having left those laws / Adds to Christ’s prayer, the power and glory clause.” When he describes the boils of venereal disease (26), it is clear he can write with utter familiarity about the grime and grit of life, and about genital itching, but he’s not exempt from good ol’ sentimental moralizing: “but oh, we allow / Good works as good, but out of fashion now” (9). Which was actually a good point. Has anything changed over time? The more I read, I didn’t really think so.

Example 1: Donne writes, “By thee the greatest stain to man’s estate / Falls on us, to be call’d effeminate” (29), and from what I hear in the hallways at my school, it’s true: When men insult other men, they call them female.

Example 2: Donne writes, “Or let me creep to some dread conjurer / Which with fantastic schemes fulfills much paper / Which hath divided heaven in tenements” (25), describing a shady character who prays on others. A salesperson with a safari hat and walkie-talkie selling time-shares in Mexico, perhaps? Or maybe a luxury waterfront penthouse suite at the Edgewater Hotel?

Example 3: Donne writes, in a showcase of dirty wit: “Like sun-parch’d quarters on the city gate / Such is thy tann’d skin’s lamentable state. / And like a bunch of ragged carrots stand / The short swoll’n fingers of thy gouty hand… / Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more / As a worm sucking an envenom’d sore?... / Leave her, and I will leave comparing thus / She and comparisons are odious” (27), a kind of one-ups-manship characteristic of a string of Yo’ Momma jokes, but from only one man. This dirty dawg doesn’t need competition. He’ll compete with himself. Ten pages later, he writes, “Though all her parts be not in th’usual place / She’hath yet an anagram of a good face” (37).(less)

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Mar 14, 2008

Xio rated it

· review of another edition

SONG.
by John Donne

SWEETEST love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me ;
But since that I
At the last must part, 'tis best,
Thus to use myself in jest
By feigned deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day ;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way ;
Then fear not me,
But believe ...more

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Jul 28, 2011

Sian Taylor added it · review of another edition

Amazing, amazing. Loved these when studying them for A level English...'Busy old fool, unruly sunne, why dost thou thus thru windows and thru curtains call on us'...not bad recall after 20 years, so he must have made an impression.

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Feb 25, 2009

Lenaya added it · review of another edition

I am muddling through Donne and while I find him to be a very powerful poet, my interpretations are weak. He is on my reading list so if anybody has any helpful insight, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Dec 10, 2011

Laura rated it

· review of another edition

I had the opportunity to take a class with the editor of this particular book, and it aided me in learning how to interpret and appreciate John Donne. Overall, I enjoyed this collection of poems.

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Mar 28, 2009

Anthony rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, theology, classic-fiction, poetry

If for no other reason (and there are many), this edition is wonderful for it's correct punctuation at the end of Donne's famous masterpiece Holly sonnet 10 "Death be not proud"

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Mar 31, 2011

Linda rated it

· review of another edition

I enjoyed the love sonnets and poetry especially. This edition could have ventured into the poet's life and given some of his pertinent background.

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Jun 16, 2010

Toni rated it

· review of another edition

"thou art the best of me"

My favorite poems are "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", "The Flea", "Song", and "Woman's Constancy"

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Nov 15, 2010

hannah rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: for-school, poetry

Read selected poems, and really need to go back and read more. He's fabulous, though I prefer his less religious works.

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Jan 04, 2012

Lisa Spangenberg rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry, seventeenth, norton-critical

Probably the best collection of Donne's poetry currently in print.

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Oct 17, 2009

Clif Smith rated it

· review of another edition

A marvelous mind for prose and poetry.

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Jun 12, 2010

Kristin rated it

· review of another edition

Reignited my love for Donne.

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May 04, 2009

Daniel rated it

· review of another edition

stop, drop, and read.

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Oct 23, 2007

Mark Desrosiers rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

One of the greatest and weirdest poets in English. He was a dirty tomcat trickster at his best, and even his metaphysical "conceits" or whatever were pretty comical (cf. for example "The Flea" to prove both points). Simultaneously dirty and sublime, how often do you come across that?

Also, he commissioned a painting of what he would probably look like when he rises in the apocalypse, so keep your eyes peeled.

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Feb 03, 2008

Alex rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: oh-the-humanity

I got the Norton assuming there would be ample critical material along with the works themselves, and yeah, there is. Much of it is not very interesting. A better biographical sketch (i.e. not the one by Izaak Walton) would have been welcome, and as interesting as it is to read criticism from two hundred years ago, I'd have liked some more modern stuff. Nicely printed and (thank God) modernised spellings.

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Apr 14, 2008

Shanisha rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

Donne's poetry is wonderfully and subtley erotic (this guy had quite an imagination for a priest :)...his love poems are clever and witty (The Flea...The Canonization) and his spiritual poems are passionate and painful (Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God).

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Aug 25, 2007

Joshua rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

Donne was the man who made me realize the worth of poetry. In twelfth grade, I read "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and didn't get it at all. But I didn't give up, and once I finally "got" it I realized how powerfully his words had affected me - over centuries.

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Sep 23, 2008

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

Apart from Donne being one of the most complicated, intelligent, and sophisticated metaphysical poet, I find his violent experience of faith and religious attractive for comparison with his courtship of women in the elegies.

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Feb 29, 2008

Asher rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Asher by: God

I have never picked up this edition, and probably it's sad sack, but every man should be carryin' around some down-home-Donne Metaphysical Lovin'. Like a heart-compass.

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Jan 11, 2011

Kristine rated it

· review of another edition

This is a nice edition of Donne's works, but even four years after graduating with my BA in English, he remains one of the few poets I walked away hating.

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Jan 27, 2008

Mikael rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: ben jonson

Shelves: booksiactuallylike

bought it in a small second hand book shop in canberra, aus. from a thai woman whose face on the left side was covered with liverspots

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May 14, 2010

Charity Johnson rated it

· review of another edition

Despite the outdated style, Donne is a genius. One can feel God's immanence; Donne does not isolate Him in His transcedence.

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Apr 24, 2011

Drew rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: high-school

I read ~~this~~ most of this; Theology English 12, 2nd semester, 3rd quarter.

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Mar 22, 2008

Pat rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Pat by: Sandy Widener

My college favorite! What a guy. I am going to go read a few of these right now.

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Sep 03, 2007

Lauren rated it

· review of another edition

Was the highlight of my 18th century lit class in undergrad. Love it!

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Oct 15, 2007

Chris Sherman rated it

· review of another edition

John Donne is one of the great poets of all time, read it.

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Jun 26, 2008

Karen rated it

· review of another edition

I love John Donne. His love poems are unbelievable.

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About John Donne

John Donne was an English poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of...more

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