John Donne's Poetry: The Miscellany

“Air and Angels” -- Thomistic angel theology combined with Neo-platonist notions of love for ideal vs. concrete objects. Donne describes the woman as an embodiment of his desire: necessarily embodied, else his love could never be offered to its object. The manner of her embodiment is as the embodiment of angels, who coalesce substantial bodies from the air to appear before sensible physical creatures. Here's the twist: the woman isn't an embodiment of his desire in her physical form, but in her love for him. The analogy runs thus: as angel is to air, so his love is to hers. His love is embodied in her love as an angel is embodied in air, and so returned to him. Is it therefore self-love, and woman's love only reciprocal?

“The Apparition” -- If you don't love me (i.e. put out), I'll die, and then I'll haunt you! But I won't tell you what I'll say, because you might change your cruel ways and dodge my vengeance. Especially vivid is the behavior of her imagined future lover, who ignores her "stir" and "pinch" and pretends to be asleep, and "in false sleep... shrink[s]", thinking she just want more sex. (Of course she has a future lover: she's a "feigned vestal", and her protestations of chastity are just meanness.)

“The Bait” -- Hooray! Donne tweaks Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd", and posits a passionate angler who invites his love to "prove" the "pleasures" of "golden sands", "crystal brooks", "silken lines", and "silver hooks" (1-4). (Of course, all of these are merely metaphors, except maybe the silken line.) In fact, he's not interested in fishing -- "let others freeze with angling reeds" (17) -- but in getting her in the water. She needn't be shy, because she "darkenest" both sun and moon. (Why? 'Cause she's nekkid, that's why, with pasty white Renaissance maiden skin. Congratulations, Donne: you made the first "blinded by the white" joke I know of.) He needn't fish anyway, since her sexiness will draw the fish to her anyway -- "thou thyself art thine own bait" (26) -- just as it draws him. Rawr.

“Break of Day” -- This is a lover's complaint of the "stay in the bed, don't leave me" variety. The argument: since we didn't go to bed because of night (i.e. for sleep), why leave the bed because of day? We came to bed for love, so we can stay in it for love. Besides, the light won't talk; and if it could would only say that (1) I like it here, and (2) I prize "my heart and honour" so that I won't leave the man who has it. (Yes, that's "honor" in the "she had sex with him" sense, and, yes, the persona is a chick: it's a genre convention, apparently. Puzzled me for a bit, too.) And why would you leave -- business? A busy man is the worst kind of lover: he's practically an adulterer. (Divided time and attention?)

“The Ecstasy” -- The short version: our souls are communing beautifully, but we still need these bodies to get it on! "Love's mysteries in the soul do grow,/But yet the body is his book" (71-2). Also, just as the sublunar world is the arena in which the heavenly intelligences manifest their ethereal impulses, so to do souls ("we are the intelligences") manifest their thoughts through the actions of the body ("our sphere").

“Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed” -- Serious hotness, full of naughty puns. The best part: when he refers to his mistress as "My America!" Very little needs to actually be written about this one: it's practically unforgettable.

“The Flea” -- Any Renaissance scholar who can't wing a discussion of "The Flea" is not worth the name.

“The Funeral” -- Along with "The Relic", one of two poems about a ring of hair the persona received from some woman (Magdalene something or other) who otherwise would not put out. Anyway, he claims that future generations can revive him by stringing her hairs through his tissues to replace his nerves: odd medieval medicine, I suppose.

“Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” -- Love this one. But, like "To His Mistress...", one I remember so well, I'll not comment on it.

“The Good Morrow” -- The lovers are a microcosm!

“A Hymn to God the Father” -- Got this one memorized.

“The Indifferent” -- I'll do anyone but a chick that wants commitment.

“Love's Alchemy” -- Bah, women.
“The Relic”
“Song”
“The Sun Rising”
“The Undertaking”
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
“A Valediction: Of Weeping”