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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.3
EAN: 9780375757341
ISBN: 0375757341
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 736
Publication Date: 2001-08-14
Publisher: Modern Library
Product Release Date: 2001-08-14
Studio: Modern Library

This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne's great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "The Extasie," and "A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day," along with the love elegies "Jealosie," "His Parting From Her," and "To His Mistris Going to Bed." Presented as well are Donne's satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries. In addition, there is a generous sampling of Donne's prose, including many of his private letters; Ignatius His Conclave, a satiric onslaught on the Jesuits; excerpts from Biathanatos, his celebrated defense of suicide; and his most famous sermons, concluding with the final "Death's Duell." "We have only to read [Donne]," wrote Virginia Woolf, "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."

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Literary Giant
Review: Few words of poetry are more quoted and misquoted than John Donne's "the Bell tolls for thee". This volume contains some of the most beautiful verse ever written in the English language. Donne Was a giant and his language while archaic is beautiful and resonates over the centuries.

A wonderful addition to anyone's library.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: John Donne makes Shakespeare read like Bukowski
Review: John Donne, the greatest poet to write in the English language.
John Donne's poetry cries truth from blood.
John Donne writes with blood
Blood is spirit.
The mind works against the spirit.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Donne, the greater poet
Review: As the years go by, and my range of knowledge grows, I find myself being drawn back again and again to John Donne. Unlike one of the previous reviewers, I do share his religion and even practice a more modern version of his denomination. Still there is something more there. As far as comparing Donne with Eliot, although I think Eliot was a great poet, there is more depth of feeling in Donne's work. However, one must consider that Eliot put his wife away (literally) when she became an embarassment because her mental problems. Since these turned out to be hormonally driven, this betrayal is all the more tragic. Donne, on the other hand, after years of carousing, found his soul mate and his one true love and continued to be devoted to her years after she died. As great as this love was, his writings show that, although he was afraid to trust the promises made by his God, he loved him even more. Now, that is devotion and that is the root of wonderful and beautiful thoughts he put to paper.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: classy courtly love poems and musings on God
Review: Although I care less about his prose, John Donne wrote some very impressive and intuitive so-called love poetry, as well as religious poems that I like. A master of metaphor, he also shows great range of emotions, insight, and passion. My favorite work is his "divine poems" and his "songs and sonnets". Some really beautiful use of language and wise "deep" sentiments. The elegies also have some wonderful lines.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Plees updeight th' speling for moderne readeres
Review: I agree with all the positive things said about Donne on this page. Also, this book's great strength is its breadth, including poems, letters, sermons, and other writings of Donne. One gets all the poems and most of his available prose. The only difficulty I had is that all of the poems are presented without any effort to modernize the spelling of words. Often, this distracts from a more perfect enjoyment of Donne's wit, sentiment, conceits and emotions. For those who might find antiquated spelling a distraction, I recommend they find another edition.

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