John Donne

Selected poems

Celeste Richardson

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

This was my poetry selection for July. I remembered enjoying Donne’s writing in college, and that still held true. He had a lovely way with words. However, I had evidently blocked out how irksome I found his views on women. The majority of the poems in this collection were more secular works, and many of these felt repetitive in terms of content. The writing was always beautiful. The meter was rigid but captivating in its structure. The rhymes and poetic imagery always felt deftly handled. But the content tended to be about either the inconstancy of woman, lust for women, or most often a combination of the two. I rolled my eyes often. Even some of his most famous offerings, such as one of his Songs (“Go and catch a falling star; get with child a mandrake root”) are about the fickle nature of women and their ultimate untrustworthiness. Obviously, as I am a woman, I found this irritating and tedious, especially as the theme continued in entry after entry.

That being said, his Holy Sonnets are exceptionally lovely. I’ve always had a soft spot for “Holy Sonnet 14” and for “A Hymn to God the Father,” and I’m so glad those were included in this collection. Their presence was the highlight for me. I didn’t love this collection as much as I was expecting to from memory, but I still found Donne’s writing lovely and his holy works moving. He remains wonderfully readable, especially considering that he died in 1631.

Selected poems

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