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The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: John Donne
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.88
You Save: $ 5.12 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: John Donne
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.3
EAN: 9780140422092
ISBN: 0140422099
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 688
Publication Date: 1977-08-25
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.3
EAN: 9780140422092
ISBN: 0140422099
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 688
Publication Date: 1977-08-25
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)
Customer Reviews of The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful for fans of the 17th century, or for those new to the era
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A great book
Review: I am greatly enjoying this book. The notes at the end explain some of Donne's more obscure imagery. A potentially controversial choice by the editor was to change the spelling of many words to more modern forms, which makes the poems easier to read at the expense of authenticity. Some people will like that and some people won't. Another odd choice was to list the poems in alphabetical order, instead of grouping them by subject matter or attemp to list them in approxiamte chronolgical order.
Buy this book and enjoy the breathtaking poems. You could do a lot worse with your time.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Enjoying poetry that sounds good when read out loud
Review: 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
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful Poetry by a Contemporary of Shakespeare.
Review: This book of poetry is quite wonderful. Donne's imagery and words are truly beautiful. His poetry displays wit, beauty and perception. Donne wrote in the sixteenth century, but his ideas and thoughts were actually quite modern. His work is incomparable when it comes to displaying the feelings and emotions of love and of friendship. Donne's poetry is often referred to a metaphysical, but it is also witty and fun. He was an extremely intelligent man, and this is reflected in his work. At times the poems can be difficult to understand, but it is well worth taking the time to do so since they are so beautiful
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Yoking together of divergent realities to complex new wholes
Review: Metaphysical poetry is the poetry of yoking together images from diverse realities into complex new wholes. Donne is the great master. His poetry is a powerful amalgam of intellect and emotion. His meditations on death as love and death in love and love as death and love after death are among the most profound and wrenchingly moving in the language. The High Church great man master giver and writer of sermons was a man known and distinguished in his own time. He gave us many great poems and lines. The bell which tolls for all of us tolls in his lines in a sonorous complex way which brings us closer to the holy sublime. This volume contains an abundance of riches in complexity, and it is one of the great classics of English literature to be read and reread until the bell tolls for mankind as a whole - G-d forbid.
Review Summary: Wonderful for fans of the 17th century, or for those new to the era
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A great book
Review: I am greatly enjoying this book. The notes at the end explain some of Donne's more obscure imagery. A potentially controversial choice by the editor was to change the spelling of many words to more modern forms, which makes the poems easier to read at the expense of authenticity. Some people will like that and some people won't. Another odd choice was to list the poems in alphabetical order, instead of grouping them by subject matter or attemp to list them in approxiamte chronolgical order.
Buy this book and enjoy the breathtaking poems. You could do a lot worse with your time.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Enjoying poetry that sounds good when read out loud
Review: 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
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful Poetry by a Contemporary of Shakespeare.
Review: This book of poetry is quite wonderful. Donne's imagery and words are truly beautiful. His poetry displays wit, beauty and perception. Donne wrote in the sixteenth century, but his ideas and thoughts were actually quite modern. His work is incomparable when it comes to displaying the feelings and emotions of love and of friendship. Donne's poetry is often referred to a metaphysical, but it is also witty and fun. He was an extremely intelligent man, and this is reflected in his work. At times the poems can be difficult to understand, but it is well worth taking the time to do so since they are so beautiful
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Yoking together of divergent realities to complex new wholes
Review: Metaphysical poetry is the poetry of yoking together images from diverse realities into complex new wholes. Donne is the great master. His poetry is a powerful amalgam of intellect and emotion. His meditations on death as love and death in love and love as death and love after death are among the most profound and wrenchingly moving in the language. The High Church great man master giver and writer of sermons was a man known and distinguished in his own time. He gave us many great poems and lines. The bell which tolls for all of us tolls in his lines in a sonorous complex way which brings us closer to the holy sublime. This volume contains an abundance of riches in complexity, and it is one of the great classics of English literature to be read and reread until the bell tolls for mankind as a whole - G-d forbid.