John Donne

Songs and Sonnets

            Not so jolly cool, generally rather repetitive. The Bait was kind of fun. We don’t tend to prefer the love songs. We find them rather lovey dovey in an rather wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over the top way.

Elegies

            Very nice by and large. Especially when they were talking about death.

Marriage songs

            We found this somewhat scandalous.

Epigrams

            We found these funny, by and large.

Satires

            A bit to long, fairly clever. Not the very best of Donne’s work.

The Progress of the Soul

            Philistines think this is not such a wonderful poem.

Verse Letters

            Should have been more careful in his personal relationships.

Epicedes and Obsequies

            Bad

The Anniversaries

            Good imagery in the first one. Most of the Progress of the Soul stuff was blah.

Divine Poems

            Some really, really nice stuff. Litany XVI is good.

The Top 500 Poems

Sir Walter Raleigh – fun

Marlowe – we don’t like him

Shakespeare – masterful use of words that didn’t exist before he mastered them.

Ben Jonson – rubbish, sappy etc

Robert Herrick – preacher, perhaps not well suited to the clergy

George Herbert – very devout, Godly man

John Milton – some really good stuff (On His Blindness)

Andrew Marvell – satirist, varying quality, some really good

Alexander Pope – rhyming couplets and rhythm was good (essay on criticism)

Thomas Grey – amazing The Gold Fishes

William Blake – there were some kinda good ones

Robert Burns – A Red, Red Rose, The Mouse

William Wordsworth – One of the first Romantic poets.

Sir Walter Scott – really good: Lochinvar

Coleridge – historical stuff, poetry was mostly inside books. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Leigh Hunt – Abou Ben Adhem is really famous

Byron – Sennacherib was really good, and generally good poetry though bad life.

Shelley – sappy

John Keats – he was pretty amazing. A Romantic but not quite so bad.

Emerson – kinda like Wadsworth. Also links with Longfellow.

Poe – The Raven, The Bells

Tennyson – Kaitlin likes him a lot. Wants to spend a quarter of her life on one of the poems, Mr. Wilson’s worst poem, in fact. Victorian pleasant, can be a bit grand.

Robert Browning – pretty amazing poet. Dramatic dialogues are very famous.

Lear – Fun, light. Sieve…(unfit vessel!)

Whitman – Very famous, wrote really free verse. O Captain! My Captain!

Matthew Arnold – nihilist, despairing etc

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – sad, late romantic

Dickinson – kinda odd.

Christian Georgina Rossetti – sweet and sad

Lewis Carroll – fun use of words

Hardy – Kaitlin despises him, Courtney doesn’t think she likes him. I can understand this. Jamie has not commented. Nor has Julie. But I’m sure they agree. We talk about his most famous novel. I have read it. Cultured me. Good selection, eh? I think we are moving on.

Hopkins – Jesuit priest. We like him, don’t we? Yes, we do. I think that is basically because Dr. Field likes him. Dr. Field has good taste, he likes Stilton. Talking of Field…

Eugene Field – optimistic, post the war of Southern Rebellion. But he was only 15 when the war of Northern Aggression ended. That kinda took the wind out of the sails – we don’t expect that much about Calvin.

Oscar Wilde – amazing writer. Ballad of Reading Gaol.

A.E. Houseman – America folksy.

Kipling – imperialistic poet.

Yeats – people like him. “If he was not on drugs, he had an amazing mind,” – according to one of our literary experts, C. Wright. “It has this postmillennial kind of feel to it,” says expert K. Grady. “Eliot feel” – C. Wright proffers. We are moving on. But the experts are moving with us, so put your seat belts on and get ready for the ride.

Robinson – We are talking of Copperfield. But it is my fault. But pretty impressive literary link for a literary know nothing.

Frost – Girls shouldn’t ride with boys. The link: we should not melt the natural frost that exits between the sexes in a good, solid, Reformed Conservative community. “Frost was interesting” –

CW “We like him” – KG. Kinda like Dillard, but not so cynical. We like mending the wall. He is very concrete.

Carl Sandburg – contemporary. One of our experts, KG, has retired. She is a snob (sic) and doesn’t like rubbish.

Wallace Stevens – interesting … very contemporary, free verse, whimsical, obscure.

William Carlos Williams – The Red Wheelbarrow

Lawrence – “drags you in” – KG. “Kicking and screaming,” I wonder? Talks about the ROTAM. “He should have killed it,” says CW.

Ezra Pound. Jerk. Bad. Ugh. TS Eliot takes a punch, he liked Pound.

Eliot – We like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Oh yes, we like him a lot. Coffee spoons. Hmm... The Wasteland requires Kenny. Very contemporary. “…its like well he’s definitely…” – CW. He became optimistic. Courtney wouldn’t marry Chesterton. Kaitlin wouldn’t marry a Baptist. I would though. But she’d have to be British.

Wilfred Owen – WW1 poet, British patriot.

EE Cummings – “wrote some pretty bizarre stuff” – expert.

WH Auden – He’s famous, but we know nothing about him.

Dylan Thomas – very good with pictures. “Wrote a hard one beginning with a “V”” – KG “What did we say about TS Eliot – apart from the fact he was very good?” - JVT

Rhetoric Assignment

I fumed and fussed with subjects deft and dull                

Yet none conformed to my desire for them.               

My head, it throbbed from thoughts within my skull,       

I watched my words die out in light grown dim.           

All topics fled before my wrathful glare                          

As each proved weak or timid when I tried                               

To make it fit my need, for words to bear                                   

Significance. Despairingly, I cried:                                             

“You fickle words that turn and tease the mind              

With cruel tricks of constancy that end                          

In lies. You make me think that I can find                                

An answer, but in vain. You are no friend.”                                

But now I can throw down the pen with glee:     

This rhyme is done at last and now I’m free.