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Start giftingJohn Donne
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Learn moreAlthough the poet John Donne lived so long ago, some phrases from his writing still linger with us today, such as "no man is an island," "death be not proud," and "for whom the bell tolls," which provided the title for one of Ernest Hemingway's novels.
John Donne used poems as a means of metaphysical inquiry and meditation as well as for very sensual expression. His daringly original use of imagery and conceits to lead the mind to profound understandings marked a new, intellectual approach to poetry. Like Shakespeare, Donne was a genius at making common words yield up rich, poetic meaning. His thought is complex, but his poems unfold in a logical way.
This collection includes songs, satires, elegies, selections from The Anniversaries, and divine poems.
Contents are:
I. Divine Poems "Resurrection, Imperfect" "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" "From the Lamentations of Jeremy" "Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness" "A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's Last Going into Germany" "A Hymn to God the Father"
II. From The Anniversaries "An Anatomy of the World" "Of the Progress of the Soul"
III. Songs, Satires, Elegies "The Expiration" "The Computer" "The Bait" "Song" "Love's Deity" "Woman's Contancy" "The Indifferent" "Community" "The Curse" "The Flea" "The Message" "The Apparition" "The Broken Heart" "Break of Day" "Confined Love" "From Sappho to Philaenis" "To His Mistress Going to Bed (Elegy 19)" "The Good Morrow" "The Sun Rising" "Jealousy (Elegy 1)" "Love's Exchange" "The Will" "Satire 2" "Satire 3" "From Metempsychosis" "The Storm" "The Calm" "To Sir Henry Wotton" "His Picture (Elegy 5" "On His Mistress (Elegy 16)" "The Dream" "The Prohibition" "The Canonization" "Air and Angels" "The Ecstasy" "A Fever" "Lover's Infiniteness" "The Anniversary" "A Valediciton: of Weeping" "Song" "A Valediciton: Forbidding Mouring" "The Undertaking" "The Funeral" "The Relic" "Twicknam Garden" "A Lecture upon the Shadow" "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day" "The Autumnal (Elegy 9)"
John Donne (1572-1631) was an English poet, satirist, philosopher, and chaplain who is considered a founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a group of writers characterized by their ability to coax new perspective through paradoxical images, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit. Donne’s works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires, and sermons. He is firmly established as one of the greatest poets in the English language, strongly influencing writers of the seventeenth century. He died in 1631 and was buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Frederick Davidson (1932–2005), also known as David Case, was one of the most prolific readers in the audiobook industry, recording more than eight hundred audiobooks in his lifetime, including over two hundred for Blackstone Audio. Born in London, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and performed for many years in radio plays for the British Broadcasting Company before coming to America in 1976. He received AudioFile’s Golden Voice Award and numerous Earphones Awards and was nominated for a Grammy for his readings.
Reviews
“We have only to read [Donne] 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.”
To John Donne
Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each Muse Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse; Whose every work of thy most early wit Came forth example, and remains so yet; Longer a-knowing than most wits do live; And which no affection praise enough can give! To it, thy language, letters, arts, best life, Which might with half mankind maintain a strife. All which I meant to praise, and yet I would; But leave, because I cannot as I should!“He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.”
“Donne...treated love poetry as a form of game-playing, the game being seduction...In Donne’s poetry eros was a blissful time out of life.”
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