#poetry
#johndonne

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m001jc36?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile #poetry #literature #History #JohnDonne

I received a book of haiku for Christmas and thought I would have a go at the form.
I present this offering about the ablutions of one of the English metaphysicals. The illustration is by my partner.

Poet fills a tub
John Donne climbs in bubble bath
Long Johns by the fire

#haiku #johndonne #johndonneslongjohns

> I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door..
> Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer.

#JohnDonne on #Distraction
when it wasn't money.
https://hearreadseespeak.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/john-donne-and-distracted-prayer/

> The modern anxiety about distraction betrays a good deal about us. Insofar as we associate attention with power and control, it reflects our fears of losing both in an increasingly unpredictable cultural and natural climate. We also find ourselves living in an economy where we pay for cultural goods with our attention, so it makes sense that we worry about running out of a precious currency.
https://theconversation.com/tolerating-distraction-87580
#JohnDonne #Augustine on #Distraction for #AttentionEconomy #DavidMarno

Fine episode of ⁦‪#InOurTime‬⁩ on #JohnDonne, as rich in theology & spirituality as in poetry. Every dean’s favourite poet, surely? ⁦‪#StPaulsCathedral (where he was dean)‬⁩ might have a view.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001gx0k?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

Happy birthday, #JohnDonne!

John Donne made love by thousand verses
But, I suspect, were limited to discourses;
Indeed, twixt his many going tos-and-fros
For love making, then, rhyming the prose,

I wonder, if he'd had at all time to recall
If he saw the sun rise or the sun fall;
Perhaps, he unto lifeless plain withdrew
When he'd no more amorous acts to do

-He oft described as resembling death
A lover and a lover's dividing breadth-
Into solitude without Muse or the moons
Where he might change his pantaloons.

Yet we know action are shorter by thrice
Than depiction by letters apt and concise;
Why, to add songs and flare to it
A day permits scarcely an hour to do it.

He'd not time by the duration of life or wit
To all the women even know or meet;
Surely, they're musings of a temperate kind
Attends to little but his intemperate mind.

So, nay, Donne, I'm sure was a good man
Having sinned in ways only poetry can;
All the sweet crimes he set down well
Were not to commit but merely to merely tell.
#poetry
#JohnDonne

The novel opens with this beautiful #epigraph, an excerpt from Sermon CXLVI by #JohnDonne, "a description of life after death."

POETRY
So I’ve been reading the collected John Donne, and yeah I guess he was pretty good at poems but he was also a huge prick! Almost every poem is “my love is real and pure and true but you’re a woman and not to be trusted.” Like dude chill tf out. Apparently he eventually becomes a priest and only writes poems about God and then cuts out poetry altogether good riddance. #poetry #JohnDonne #HistoricalAssholes

'The Good Morrow' by John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den..

#Poetry #JohnDonne

@terrygrundy
“Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring makes it more.”
#JohnDonne

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, …
#StLucia #stlucysday #johndonne

The whole Saint Lucy's Day poem is reproduced in our ancient Tumblr Advent Calendar. https://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/post/135735852252/an-nyrb-advent-day-22-a-nocturnal-upon-st

#saintlucy #wintersolstice #johndonne #renaissancepoetry #johnwilliams

If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

#JohnDonne, A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day

POETRY

I started reading The Collected Poems of John Donne this morning. I’ve come across him here and there, but I never knew much about him or his writing. The first poem in the book is “The Good-Morrow,” which has some of the best lines on love ever. #poetry #JohnDonne #LovePoetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44104/the-good-morrow

Meditation XVII Box #origami #JohnDonne

John Donne's Meditation XVII on a 17-sided tato box.

Listening to the audiobook of the excellent, razor-sharp biog of John Donne, Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell, and astonished to discover that among many other coinages Donne invented the word 'emancipation'. Poets really are something more than the legislators of mankind.

Also amused as someone who works at Newbattle to recall that the really famous Lothian portrait of Donne was misattributed to John Duns Scotus until the 1950s! Whoops.

#amlistening
#johndonne
#katherinerundell

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
#JohnDonne Meditation XVII

Roof-walking: among the hobbies of Katherine Rundell, youngest winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for her biography of “poet of desire” John Donne. Here she is atop All Souls, Oxford.

#BaillieGifford #KatherineRundell #JohnDonne