TS Heavy Hitters Poll #4: John Donne vs William Blake

Neither of these is a particular favourite. Apart from the short lyrics, some of which I love, Blake is too obscure for me. Even "Milton" frustrates me by its opacity and it's a model of clarity compared to most of the longer poems. I don't much like his very mannered pictures either although there must be a kind of genius in creating a personal style that's so immediately recognisable.

I remember reading a introduction in an old copy of Donne's collected poems (by Herbert Grierson from memory) that argued his most conspicuous weakness was that he didn't love beauty for its own sake. I'm sure this'd be considered a fusty and even impertinent criticism of Donne nowadays, but it gets to the heart of my problem with him: I prefer poets who are more in love with beauty for its own sake. The most obviously beautiful passage in Donne is the "for whom the bells" toll sermon, but I don't find that kind of beauty often enough in the poetry. The St Lucy Nocturnal is perhaps the most obvious exception.

Donne still edges this, though.

not gonna choose

you cant make me choose

the morgan library had a blake exhibit up a few months ago, it was stunning

You have to choose.

Everyone has to choose.

How do you think I feel betraying the one true force-of-nature radical in English literary history for a minor Anglican divine of the 17th Century?

It hurts. But I did it.

Wait I forgot to vote. I did it now.

but max...it's a poll

Marvell >>> Donne

Nah, but nice try.

And I'm geographically obliged to defend Marvell but nah.

acoleuthic, Marvell hit some pretty high notes, but Donne has more range, more depth and more staying power. My guess is that you just haven't found the experience that will allow you to connect with Donne's anguish, yet.

it's true that Marvell connected with me more as a student - his metaphor was grander, more bombastic, more instantly ingenious - perhaps Donne's subtlety and phrasing will win me over

Marvell's "The Garden" and "To His Coy Mistress" are his only really memorable poems imo; he was second-tier.

really really dig the Mower poems and A Dialogue Between The Body And The Soul

I love Marvell, but c'mon...

and On A Drop Of Water

OK FINE I tried.

Blake, btw.

I wd probably end up voting Donne as il miglior fabbro but then I will probably just not vote.

Marvell >>> Donne

― acoleuthic, Monday, August 23, 2010 5:16 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol at you

it's true that Marvell connected with me more as a student - his metaphor was grander, more bombastic, more instantly ingenious - perhaps Donne's subtlety and phrasing will win me over

― acoleuthic, Monday, August 23, 2010 5:28 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

still loling

"perhaps"

I am also on the Donne bandwagon - really the shining light of poetry of his time - and blake is certainly good but man Donne is so sneakily wicked and funny.

One of the best examples being the first poem, which is the greatest poem ever written to convey the concept of "Hey you, quit making excuses and LETS BONE."

One of my favorite movie moments is Emma Thompson and Eileen Atkins' pas de deux using "Death, Be Not Proud" in Wit.

To Christ is better than The Flea

for a start it features more or less the best pun on a poet's own name in the entire history of verse

The release in the last line -- damn.

Batter my heart, three-person'd 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 usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd 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.

One of my favorite movie moments is Emma Thompson and Eileen Atkins' pas de deux using "Death, Be Not Proud" in Wit.

Was just thinking about this.

Just on Marvell: I love him, & would say his range (in some senses) is surprisingly broad: he tries a fair bit, and pulls off nearly everything he tries brilliantly. (eg He can do politics in a way Donne can't or won't (largely circumstance, maybe): the Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return is phenomenal. And his Satires are v good, but do pale against Donne's). But yeah, he does have a slightly narrow sensibility: can't resist the inside-out, upside-down or perspective-trick images, or the short-meter couplets. I think he's one of the oddest and most brilliant writers of a great age, but partly because of these limits, and partly because he didn't write that much, I don't think he'd have a place in the HEAVY HITTERS series.

I like Marvell fine but he is rightly consigned to the 2nd tier. John Donne is life-changing.

Blake in a heartbeat. But the artwork could be swaying that vote. I've never seen a Donne painting.

― Karen D. Tregaskin, Monday, August 23, 2010 6:35 AM (9 hours agoBookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is absolutely correct.

really appreciate the evidence here, particularly the precis of blake's worldview, abbott

The article with the picture thomp posted is a pretty satisfying intro to how challenging/rewarding it is to talk about Blake. One thing I love about him is how real everything was to him, he had absolute faith in artistic vision, his own and those he admired. Por ejemplo, on Milton: “If historical facts can be written by inspiration Miltons Paradise Lost is as true as Genesis or Exodus." All the couplets people love in "Auguries of Innocence" about seeing eternity in a grain of sand, I think that was real to him. And so was all the messy, multivalent meltdown in his long works like Jerusalem. I think Los was as real to him as Milton anyone else in his life – Milton being another character in his poetry.

Soapboxing this much about Blake...ILX has never felt so much like my real life.

I also love that Blake dethroned his idols (Swedenborg & Milton's treatment in "Marriage of Heaven & Hell"), that he never attended a church but had such a powerful (and original) relationship with Christ.

Can I show you guys how out of control the Blake Archive "image by theme" search is?

A quick question, Abbott; if you knew nothing about Blake but the text of his poems, would you derive as much pleasure from them? It seems to me you are elevating the poet, but often on grounds apart from his poetry. This is legitimate enough, but it is worth recognizing as a different thing than loving his poems through their own life as poems.

Marvell >>> Donne

― acoleuthic, Monday, August 23, 2010 5:16 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i didn't read the rest of this thread after this point, so maybe this has been covered, but you're a crazy person

haha looks like everybody already covered this; good job, guys

A quick question, Abbott; if you knew nothing about Blake but the text of his poems, would you derive as much pleasure from them? It seems to me you are elevating the poet, but often on grounds apart from his poetry. This is legitimate enough, but it is worth recognizing as a different thing than loving his poems through their own life as poems.

― Aimless, Monday, August 23, 2010 8:16 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i can speak to this, actually; i am visually kind of dumb, so that i appreciate Blake's images and work hard to incorporate them into my experience of reading his poetry, but the language alone is what first struck me and it's still the essence of my reading experience.

everything Abbott said about Blake otm

he's a hero

hi there not to be "that undergrad guy" but the visuals are as much a part of the text of (many of) blakes poems as the words! which is to say that loving the visuals is as important a component of"loving his poems through their own life as poems" as loving the (word-part) language is!

but hey i am one of those people who thinks people should pay closer attention to the length and direction of the dashes emily dickinson use[s/d]

that's totally true; sometimes undergrads know what's up

holla

i didn't read the rest of this thread after this point, so maybe this has been covered, but you're a crazy person

― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 August 2010 01:53 (21 minutes ago)

you all know how I operate on ILX by now - it's not trolling, but it's not incontrovertible statement of opinion either - consider it a testing of the waters coupled with my own undergraduate leanings - Donne will receive more attention from me as a result of this for sure

dunno how I'd start on Blake because the dude is operating on a level of inspiration that invites an 'all or nothing' response - either I'll say 'yes, he is immutable force of human creativity' or I dive into all his works trying to find apposite signifiers and methods of expression - to briefly compromise, I'll state that the scope and loose organisation of his work is probably the most attractive aspect of his poetry - he has enormous and all-encompassing ambition but the good sense to cluster his manifestos in discrete and approachable fragments which themselves respond to focused analysis - he also isn't afraid to mix his forms - poetry, prose and art - depending upon how each part of the whole needs to be expressed

i appreciate how consistent yr taste is louis

how do you mean? is that sarcasm? or do you mean that was a very lj-esque explanation

no, no. i just like that you know what you like, and why

By the wayside, Dryden was the heir to a mighty heritage, but his aims, methods and means are no longer seen sympathetically, even when they are viewed understandingly. Those who love him are a vanishingly small minority.

includes me. But it's complicated – I wrote my doctorate on him back in the day. Will probably ramble a little abt him once I've woken up.

So yeah, I do love Dryden, but it's a complicated relationship. I lived with him for abt 5 years, so when I go back now, it's for pleasure, but I'll likely bump into something that makes me think 'I got that wrong' or trips an academic switch in my head. Can make me a little tense.

I do love him, though - dunno if I can say why, clearly. I think the core of it is his delight in it all - in making verse, in trying things out, in building strange ornate structures or rushing along a story, and above all in arguing - love his rhetorical energy and versatility, how he bounces around flipping between reasoned argument and jokes and magpie allusiveness and mock-modesty to win a scrap.

There's all sorts of detail that I enjoy, too - his knack for a good word, the metrical command, how naturally and easily he can hit rhymes in couplets, the syntactical deftness that lets him carry you over multiple lines.

Almost all of this would apply to Donne too, but that shows up the limits of Dryden: Donne's immediate presence & emotional vitality isn't there in Dryden - where Dryden's moving, it tends to be indirect, reserved; and Dryden belongs to this world. Very little spiritual or anguished about him

Dryden was the heir to a mighty heritage, but his aims, methods and means are no longer seen sympathetically, even when they are viewed understandingly.

You can say this about Pope, Swift, Coleridge, Arnold – hell, any English poet.

I think it's more a case with Dryden than almost any of the others that you mention there, tbh. Pope has his catchy couplets, still in popular usage on occasion, but also his po-mo Dunciad (if you will - I won't, but you see what I mean), Swift has Gulliver and his 'savage indignation' (A Modest Proposal), even the madness of A Tale of a Tub sits quite nicely with the literature of doubt and uncertainty, Romantic post-Romantic stuff tends to be fairly easily swallowed, we're still living in an age which values inspiration/newness/individuality etc.

I've always found, despite recognising much of the virtues tos/woof describes, him extremely resistant to sympathetic reading. I like what he does, but I often find myself impressed rather than affectionate towards him. All the others you cite, I find more sympathetic, if not actually 'better'.

I don't know why "death of the author" has been such a forceful center of thought for so long, but I could never really swallow it.

you're in luck Abbott - as far as I know reading & paying close attn to the author's bio is very much back in use as a valid strategy

Was a bit unsure about the 'mighty heritage' myself - didn't know whether that meant English or Classical. If the former, the (then) perceived-as-major poets in the generation before him are now massively unfashionable - Waller, Denham and Cowley. Jonson prob the heaviest hitter who's a direct ancestor; Donne & the metaphysicals already suffering from that 'great wit, awkward verse' rep that afflicts them through to the revival in the last century. The latter's nearer the mark, but he's building, emulating and stealing to create an English trad as much as inheriting.

(btw Abbott, awesome repping for Blake.)

I don't know why "death of the author" has been such a forceful center of thought for so long

It's not this so much for me as, in reading poetry as a poet, I always want to find out what I can learn or derive inspiration from in what I am reading. Therefore, while it is interesting for me to know the poet's biographical details and connect them to the imagery, ideas or tone of the poem, I can't really learn how to be that poet, as a means of incorporating what is good in their work into my own. Their lives are their exclusive property and I can't filch bits of their identity. (Of course, many a young writer tries this tactic, but they look pretty ridiculous trying to be Pound, Kerouac or Edna St. Vincent Millay.)

William Blake would not want you to be him anyway! Inspiration not memory.

I mean, I think since he was criticizing Shakespeare & Milton for taking on Greek & Latin influences, and hoping for a day when "the Daughters of Memory" would become "the Daughters of Inspiration," that is why I think that. I didn't call him or anything.

haha you seem to be very tuned to him!

Agree about Dryden. I used to know an Eng Lit lecturer who (like woof) wrote his doctoral thesis on Dryden and was a massive enthusiast. He got very disheartened that because his students routinely avoided Dryden despite his best advocacy and because the reasons they gave always seemed so utterly predictable and unfair. I doubt he'd have had similar problems with any other "major" poet (post-medieval, anyway). My own (admittedly half-hearted) attempts to engage with Dryden were not a success.

Batter my heart three personed god perfectly illustrates some of my problems as a (partial) Donne dissenter. For me it's too much bravura display. It's all about Donne, really, not God. Herbert, for example, may not match Donne for fireworks but is so much better at conveying religious feeling.

It's all about Donne, really, not God. Herbert, for example, may not match Donne for fireworks but is so much better at conveying religious feeling.

Guess as a starting point I'd tentatively agree. Would say, however, that I prefer fireworks to, for instance, The Collar which I think is brilliantly successful in its intent (and indeed is a great poem). So then you start getting into the question of what religious feeling is, and then when I get there, then I start saying that Donne was one of the greatest explorers and configurers of what religious feeling is, pushing the limits and exploring the boundaries of that feeling, that there has ever been, and so, while I'd agree with the premise, I'd end up saying that even there, Donne is the better poet.

Still haven't voted btw. Finger hovering over Donne, but then I think 'The fire, the fire is falling!', and remember the intensity with which I enjoyed Blake as a teenager.

Pairing Herbert and Donne would have caused some real torment.

Remember being awe-inspired when I first read the Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day - love, darkness, rhythmic brilliance, brilliance of imagery in detail and in the whole, and yes, the convoluted wit, in this case reminding me slightly of some of Ben Jonson's poetry. I know it turns some off, but the way that the perspectives turn and slot into place, like an astrolabe, or the right viewing of a masque, is just utterly brilliant.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

donne by a burning bright tiger whisker. always was fond of donne. blake i don't know so well. someday!

i refused to vote in this poll it was impossible

yeah i didnt vote either

the real winner.................................................

..........................................................................................was poetry

Hilarious beatdown:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1981/12/03/there-is-no-penance-due-to-innocence/