by Linda Ann Nickerson

Created on: February 08, 2007   Last Updated: July 01, 2008

DONNE SO WELL!

Ask nearly any literature enthusiast to name his or her favorite English poet. Most will cite William Shakespeare, the bard of Stratford-on-Avon. Not me.

Sure, I love Shakespeare. That's a given. But my all-time favorite English poet has to be John Donne.

I love Donne's brilliant use of words. John Donne used double meanings and witty phrasings to portray deep meanings about God and love, life and death, death and sin, and spiritual truths. Donne's honest questions and earnest longings for greater devotion to God have stirred readers' souls for centuries.

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1572, John Donne was the son of a successful ironworker. His father died when he was four, and his mother married a prominent doctor. John Donne was raised in London.

No shrinking violet, John Donne joined Sir Walter Raleigh in military expeditions in his twenties. In 1601, when Donne was nearly thirty years old, he scandalously married Anne More, who was 17. Her father had him arrested and imprisoned. (Their marriage produced twelve children.)

For the next ten years, Donne struggled to support his family through writing and legal work. He served in English Parliament twice.

In 1609-10, John Donne wrote his famous series, "Holy Sonnets," focusing on spiritual themes.

In 1614, John Donne was honored by Cambridge University with an honorary doctorate in divinity. He was later ordained and became a popular and dynamic preacher, attracting huge crowds at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Donne was one of the first English poets to write satiric pieces in formal verse form. He also wrote dramatic monologues, primarily about carnal and spiritual love. Donne's other works included elegies, epigrams, sonnets, and letters-in-verse. His work was marked by puns, witticisms, and wordplays, even as he focused on serious spiritual subjects.

MY FAVORITE JOHN DONNE POEM

My favorite piece, of all John Donne's works, is this classic and well-known sonnet, known as "Holy Sonnet 14" or "Holy Sonnet XIV," but commonly called "Batter My Heart."

"Holy Sonnet 14"

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

What an exciting prayer in verse! How I long to belong to God, but how I need Him to bend my will to His own!

SOURCE:
"Holy Sonnet 14," by John Donne, royalty-free - public domain
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonne t14.php

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