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Some Background About Metaphysical Poems
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The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, whose work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. These poets were not formally affiliated; most of them did not even know or read each other.The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables... The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Their style was characterized by wit and metaphysical conceits—far-fetched or unusual similes or metaphors, such as in Andrew Marvell’s comparison of the soul with a drop of dew; in an expanded epigram format, with the use of simple verse forms, octosyllabic couplets, quatrains or stanzas in which length of line and rhyme scheme enforce the sense. The specific definition of wit which Johnson applied to the school was: "...a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike." Their poetry diverged from the style of their times, containing neither images of nature nor allusions to classical mythology, as were common. Several metaphysical poets, especially John Donne, were influenced by Neo-Platonism. One of the primary Platonic concepts found in metaphysical poetry is the idea that the perfection of beauty in the beloved acted as a remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm. Their work relies on images and references to the contemporary scientific or geographical discoveries. These were used to examine religious and moral questions, often employing an element of casuistry (i.e. theoretical reasoning used to resolve moral problems, often evasive or arcane) to define their understanding or personal relationship with God.
from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphys...
John Donne (1572–1631)George Herbert (1593–1633)
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
Saint Robert Southwell (c. 1561–1595)
Richard Crashaw (c. 1613–1649)
Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 – 1674)
Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)
Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)
Thomas Carew (1595–1640)[12]
George Chapman (c. 1559–1634)
John Hall (c. 1627–1656)[13]
Edward Herbert (1583–1648)[14]
Richard Leigh (1649-1728)[15]
Katherine Philips (1632–1664),
Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)[16]
Edward Taylor (c. 1642–1729)
The list on message three is interesting. I'm looking at Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century by Herbert Grierson, first published 1921, an anthology of about 200 pp, with a 60 page intro, and very influential in its time. All the poets you list are represented, excepting southwell, traherne, bradstreet, chapman, leigh and taylor. He chooses poems from 25 poets, and a few anonymous ones.I suppose there is a problem of definition: you might be a metaphysical poet, or you might write a metaphysical poem. So Grierson includes Milton, whom one does not think of as metaphysical, but his Nativity Ode (by the definition in message 2), clearly is.
Perhaps a good focal point is Donne, who is hard-core metaphical, and his "Songs and Sonets" (note the spelling), mentioned above, which almost act as a definition by examples. Why don't I post one of them for reading in a couple of days, with a little intro?
Metaphysical, metaphysical, ... it takes some writing. Shall we start abbreviating it to meta?
Yes , please post a Donne for us Martin! Thank you!I was wondering if we might choose a common book of poets and work our way through them?
I am also happy to choose one or two and track down individual poems etc.
Lets pick four poems...make a two week schedule for each one and see if we can find some folks to join us...or we just bat away at the poems?
I am going to go with a gender slant and choose...
a poem titled "Another" by Anne Bradstreet...mainly because I am intriqued by the title...so mysterious!
http://www.annebradstreet.com/another...
and..."Orinda to Lucasia Partint October 1661...also because I like the title! (how shallow of me) by Katherine Phillips
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/orinda...
YES!! Please post a Donne for us Martin!!!
Well, Donne's "song" was a success! (I hope Bill stays with us: he's an English teacher, I think, so probably sees you and me as interesting but rather undisciplined students -- or worse.)Why not post a new thread at some point, "meta poem #2", with a little intro? Or I'll do it for you if you like, but then it would be my intro, not yours?
Following an anthology may be a bit constraining. Greerson's has two poems by Katherine Phillips, again both love poems to Lucasia, but not the one you found, and none by Anne Bradstreet.
Greerson divides his collection into "love poems", "divine poems", "miscellaneous". I suspect we'll be choosing mainly from the 1st and 3rd category, but we should not ignore the 2nd, and it might be interesting to compare the response of modern readers with different types of faith, or no faith at all.
I have come across K Phillips before, in Keats' letters. In a letter to Reynolds, 1817, after deploring the abrasive blustockings of his own time, he says,
"I had longed for some real feminine Modesty in these things, and was therefore gladdened in the extreme on opening the other day, one of Bailey’s Books—a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs. Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor’s, and called “The Matchless Orinda—” You must have heard of her, and most likely read her Poetry—I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of treating you with a few stanzas—I do it at a venture—You will not regret reading them once more. The following, to her friend Mrs. M. A. at parting, you will judge of.
I have examin’d and do find,
Of all that favour me
...."
he then quotes the whole poem, ending with,
"In other of her poems there is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind—which we will con over together."
I can't find Gittings' edition of the Keats letters on goodreads, but it is on amazon:
Yes, I will start another thread in a short bit...or wait maybe now...ha ha
The Anne Bradstreet read also a success, insofor as it can be with only 2 contributors. I note that at present, meta poem #2 has had 2 views, in other words you and me only Candy.I wonder how we could get some extra involvement? I've looked at some of the "poetry" groups on goodreads. I suppose one could post an advert in "¡POETRY!", the biggest group with 10,000 members.
I might message Bill, but I don't want him to think we're trying to drag him in ....
I have re-visited many of the posts here about the poets...and i am truly excited.I looked into Grierson too...and I am late for the party here Martin...but my goodness...it is a feast...
I found this...
http://www.bartleby.com/105/1000.html
and I can't stop reading it...
The bartleby page of your last post an excellent find, Candy. How nicely the text is presented!My copy of Grierson, an OUP paperback with the usual rubbishy modern binding, fell to bits on me a few weeks back, so I was forced to replace the book from abebooks.com. I now have a "real" book, 2nd impression, 1925. Since then I've been rubbing out the dumb pencil comments of a previous owner, much to my wife's displeasure, as the black bits of the rubber get brushed onto the counterpane. I've also been reading the intro, and it is indeed good: intense and scholarly.
To Grierson, Donne is the great innovator and leader of the metaphysical school, the later poets, in their different ways, follow his lead. Grierson spends time defending complaints about the "rugged and harsh" quality of his verse.
I used to feel that, too, when I first read Donne, but I don't now. I just find that whereas late 19th century poetry can be read pretty much as it is found on the page, with Donne you have to spend a little more time preparing for where the accent will fall. But once you've decided that, there's no real disharmony. My guess is that American readers don't find this aspect of Donne problematic, since they are prepared for it by the rugged quality of so much of their poetry --
But it's interesting Bill admits the roughness of Donne's verse when he says,
"the movement of this poem [go and catch a falling star] is so smooth, elegant and so characteristically Elizabethan that it demonstrates that Donne's rough rhythms were a deliberate artistic choice ..."
and I do see exactly what he means here.
Comments please!
Aha, activities in Salon des Refuses again today!I'll reply to Candy's post in a day or two (busy!), as we're both reading this book by Russell at the moment, but I wanted to thank Bill for his posts on the metaphysicals, and apologise to him from me and Candy that the metaphysical reads seem to have fizzled out. We were hoping to get more people involved, and unfortunately that did not happen.
John Donne, along with similar but distinct poets such as George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughn, developed a poetic style in which philosophical and spiritual subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox. This group of writers established meditation—based on the union of thought and feeling sought after in Jesuit Ignatian meditation—as a poetic mode.
The metaphysical poets were eclipsed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by romantic and Victorian poets, but twentieth century readers and scholars, seeing in the metaphysicals an attempt to understand pressing political and scientific upheavals, engaged them with renewed interest. In his essay "The Metaphysical Poets," T. S. Eliot, in particular, saw in this group of poets a capacity for "devouring all kinds of experience."
John Donne (1572 – 1631) was the most influential metaphysical poet. His personal relationship with spirituality is at the center of most of his work, and the psychological analysis and sexual realism of his work marked a dramatic departure from traditional, genteel verse. His early work, collected in Satires and in Songs and Sonnets, was released in an era of religious oppression. His Holy Sonnets, which contains many of Donne’s most enduring poems, was released shortly after his wife died in childbirth. The intensity with which Donne grapples with concepts of divinity and mortality in the Holy Sonnets is exemplified in "Sonnet X [Death, be not proud]," "Sonnet XIV [Batter my heart, three person’d God]," and "Sonnet XVII [Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt]."
George Herbert (1593 – 1633) and Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) were remarkable poets who did not live to see a collection of their poems published. Herbert, the son of a prominent literary patron to whom Donne dedicated his Holy Sonnets, spent the last years of his short life as a rector in a small town. On his deathbed, he handed his poems to a friend with the request that they be published only if they might aid "any dejected poor soul." Marvell wrote politically charged poems that would have cost him his freedom or his life had they been public. He was a secretary to John Milton, and once Milton was imprisoned during the Restoration, Marvell successfully petitioned to have the elder poet freed. His complex lyric and satirical poems were collected after his death amid an air of secrecy.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...