Eight Metaphysical Poets

by Jack Dlaglish

This series presents complete poems and generous excerpts from longer works. Each book includes a biographical and critical introduction, a commentary and notes on the poems. This book contains poems by Donne, Herbert, Carew, Crashaw, Vaughan, King, Marvell and Cowley.

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 1967

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

10+ years later, turns out I still adore Marvell's To his Coy Mistress, and reading your teenage pencilled annotations can be quite entertaining. A+ choice Mr Johnson, English A2.

[Petula · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I had picked up this book, with no intention of buying, but anything to do with poetry, was thrown into my basket. However, it had been sitting on my shelf for a few years, before I actually, eventually read it.

Curious about different and styles of poetry and how they were written, long before I was born. I wanted to know what other poets, from a different time, wrote about and why.

This book focuses on the 17th Century and 8 Poets, who were given the title of 'metaphysical poets.' The title, immediately, grabbed me, because of it's leaning to towards science, which I have an interest in.

However, this book had nothing to do with science at all…lol

But expressed a view of these 8 poets, who were titled Metaphysical ones, because of their style and diction. Their work was deemed,'systematic, coherent and philosophical, because they had a theological view of nature, which affected the way they wrote.

Furthermore, they touched on areas of life, not so different from the poets of today. Only their descriptiveness and language is more in keeping with 17th Century of course!

One of my favourites, titled 'The world '. Once you are able to decipher the language in which it was written, you get a deeper sense of the meaning. The poem, 'The world, speaks of man's disobedience to God and the woe of man trials and tribulations…

The only difference between current poems written about Man, God, Love, and Life…is the style and language. I enjoyed reading it for the learning process. But I would rather read the same engaging process of words in 'plain OLE English....' lol

[Ali Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the set books for my A-level English, way back in the 80's. I'm not sure 'enjoyed' is the word I would use to describe this book, but there are lines of poetry from here that come to mind from time to time and bring a smile to my face.
I kept my copy after A-levels, and still have it. Every now and again I dip into it and now, yes, I think I do enjoy reading it, probably because now there is no looming threat of exams... Nostalgic happiness.

[Anthea Peries · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of interesting, unusual poems and references.