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	• The Metaphysical Poets (Penguin Classics) Various Penguin Classics, 1960 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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The poets represented here cover a good selection of this Elizabethan style. (Elizabeth herself is represented by a verse). Gardner has wisely chosen the poets and their poems. Have this volume if only to read the verse of Donne and Marvell, heck, if only to read "The Sonne Rising" and "To My Coy Mistress". Certainly this would be an excellent place to start in a study of the metaphysical poets.

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Poetry with a soul

This anthology includes the poetry of some 38 men who lived between roughly 1550 and 1700. "Elizabethan England" isn't a completely accurate name, and the picture painted by Hollywood isn't all true either (think of Errol Flynn as Lord Essex and Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth). But both these are better clues about the period than no clues at all.
This anthology gives you proof, if you need it, that literature of the time was more than Shakespeare and Milton. There are poems from many different writers from different backgrounds. Sure, poems by both Billy and Johnny are included, but you'll also find the poetry of soldiers, sailors, scholars, the odd doctor and lawyer, and others.

An enormous amount of literature was produced during that period; some call it English poetry's Golden Age. You'll find a sample of that Golden Age in this book.

There's a useful introduction of a little over 14 pages, and, in my copy (3rd edition), notes on the text and prefaces to the editions. The usual things are there: a table of contents, an index of authors, and an index of first lines. All are exactly as you would expect them to be.

After the poems, you'll find brief biographies of the poets; some might have a little too much 'smart', and there might be a little more name-dropping than is necessary, but the glimpse into the lives of the poets is a valuable part of the whole.

"Metaphysical Poets"????
The title may make you avoid this book, but don't be put off. It's a misleading name; don't think "Metaphysical" about these poets in the same way that you might think "Existential" about Sartre.

The poets didn't identify themselves as 'Metaphysical' - that came after they were dead - and their poetry wasn't about Metaphysics as you might understand it. There are no truly difficult concepts, but there are thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires, love ... things beyond physical senses. You could say that it's poetry with a soul.

The form of the poetry (the rhyming, verse structure and so on) is very rigid compared with the common forms of poetry being written today. But the meaning of the poetry is not necessarily different from today's poetry.

Nothing has been done to make it more readable for modern people. The spelling and the language have not been changed from the original. They may put some of you off. But the poetry is strong, and if it had been altered, some of its strength would have been lost.

Poems with that kind of strength climb over any difficulties of rigid structure and stroll past those kinds of words and spellings (such as prithee, anon, wrinckle, and proclaime). They can tell you how these poets thought. Their angst? No, not at all.

Life today might be very different from life in the 1600's, but this anthology shows that the way people think about life has not really changed since these poems were written.

None of the poems reads as constructed or forced. That shows the exceptional skill of their writers, proving that the true art is in hiding the art. They were generally written with intentional patterns of intonation, more for the ear than the eye, in much the same way as Shakespeare's plays were written. When you hear the words, the rhythms and forms leap out with the natural rise and fall of speech (not recited mechanically or affectedly). I haven't found a poem here that doesn't ask to be read aloud, or at least muttered quietly to yourself.

There is a risky side-effect that doesn't happen when the poems are merely seen. Most likely, your hearing one will give you such a strong feeling of empathy with the poet that you say "Wow, I know EXACTLY what this is about, and what was going through the mind of the guy who wrote it", and you'll never be able to read it again without hearing it in your mind.
People who haven't done that might think that you're strange. But you'll know that you're much less strange than they are. Maybe you'll smile smugly to yourself. Maybe you'll decide to lend them the book. You could even buy another copy to give as a gift. Or buy a few....

You could use this anthology as a starting point for reading more of the same. But it's a good anthology, so you don't have to.

You could use it as a time capsule; if you're at all interested in Shakespeare for school, college, acting, or 'just because', this anthology is an excellent way of putting him into the context of his time and his contemporaries. But it's poetry, so you don't have to.

The really good thing about this anthology has nothing to do with its historical value or literary merit.

It's simply poetry. Poetry with a soul.

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Her style at times leans towards the metaphysical itself: 'A brief comparison can be a conceit if two things patently unlike, or which we should never think of together, are shown to be alike in a single point in such a way, or in such a context, that we feel their incongruity'. So to help understand the poetry we have an introduction that is partly written in a 'stong lines' style and which needs almost the same amount of concentration as the poetry.

There is a bit of literary name dropping: 'Between Dryden and Johnson comes Pope, who is reported by Spence to have remarked that "Cowley, as well as Davenant, borrowed his metaphysical style from Donne"'.

The spellings have not been modernised which may be a problem.

Overall recommened strongly.

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Complex and great poetry

The English Metaphysical Poets ,Donne, Vaughn , Herbert, Traherne, Cowley write with vigor and energy. Their poetry was initially defined and criticized by Samuel Johnson. "'He affects the Metaphysics... in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts.' He disapproved of Donne's stylistic excesses, particularly his extravagant conceits (or witty comparisons) and his tendency towards hyperbolic abstractions. JOHNSON consolidated the argument in THE LIVES OF THE POETS, where he noted (with reference to Cowley) that 'about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets'. He went on to describe the far-fetched nature of their comparisons as 'a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike'. Examples of the practice Johnson condemned would include the extended comparison of love with astrology (by Donne) and of the soul with a drop of dew (by Marvell).(Cambridge Guide to English Literature)
The Metaphysicals were long ignored. It was TS Eliot in a pioneering turn of the century which brought them back into vogue.
Among their work are some of the greatest poetry in English Literature.
This anthology provides examples of much of this.

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