{"id":48357,"date":"2017-03-16T00:01:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T07:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2017-03-16T00:01:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T07:01:13","slug":"john-donne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/john-donne\/","title":{"rendered":"John Donne — A Love Affair With a Poet Long Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John
John Donne: “[B]end your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.” Lake Michigan in summer photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

For some reason, I don’t read much poetry these days. I think I haven’t the patience to work through the words and complicated sentences and the metaphors that could\u00a0mean this, but could just as easily\u00a0mean that.<\/p>\n

With poetry, the reader is often intentionally left\u00a0wondering. With prose, especially nonfiction prose — an historical account, a memoir — the writer’s intentions tend to be clearer, more explicit. The writer — and the reader — get to the point directly; nobody’s time is wasted.<\/p>\n

Maybe when I am a little older, a little wiser, a little more patient, a little more open to following along where a poet wants to lead me, maybe then I’ll turn my attention once again\u00a0to the poetry that so intoxicated me\u00a0as an undergraduate English major at the University of Michigan, back when I was\u00a0twenty years old and in love\u00a0with a man\u00a0three hundred years\u00a0dead, namely, the seventeenth-century\u00a0poet and man of passion, John Donne.<\/p>\n

Donne was a\u00a0“libertine turned religious,” according to\u00a0the comments I made\u00a0in\u00a0the margins of my textbook. My notes were cautious and cerebral —\u00a0something\u00a0I could later safely\u00a0put into a term paper for all to read. My feelings, on the other hand, were not so circumspect. For me, at\u00a0age 20, Donne’s poems fairly burst with\u00a0yearning, spiritual and erotic.<\/p>\n

This poem, one of Donne’s “Holy Sonnets,” was my favorite:<\/p>\n

\n

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you<\/p>\n

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;<\/p>\n

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend<\/p>\n

Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.<\/p>\n

I, like an usurped town, to another due,<\/p>\n

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end;<\/p>\n

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,<\/p>\n

But is captived and proves weak or untrue.<\/p>\n

Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain,<\/p>\n

But am betrothed unto your enemy:<\/p>\n

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,<\/p>\n

Take me to you, imprison me, for I<\/p>\n

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,<\/p>\n

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Whew!<\/p>\n

Two years later, I graduated from college and eventually took up writing and reading\u00a0journalism. Nothing steamy. No John Donne. Mostly stuff that I could\u00a0clip from\u00a0the newspaper and send home to my mother. I\u00a0forgot all about John Donne . . . Until a few years ago, when I\u00a0attended John Adam’s opera, “Doctor Atomic,” during its 2005 premiere season.<\/p>\n

It turned out that both\u00a0\u00a0John Adams, the composer, and\u00a0Robert Oppenheimer,\u00a0 the theoretical physicist who became known as the father of\u00a0the atomic bomb, shared my\u00a0enthusiasm for Donne. Adams set the poem to music for “Doctor Atomic,” putting the words in Oppenheimer’s mouth as\u00a0the physicist\u00a0anguished over the enormity of the bomb he was building.<\/p>\n

Listen as a seventeenth century metaphysical poet explodes into the twenty-first century in the\u00a0“Doctor Atomic” aria.<\/p>\n

See what I mean?<\/p>\n

More about poetry at “Coleman Barks and Rumi — What a Few Lines of Poetry (and a Witch) Taught Me.”<\/a>\u00a0More about composer John Adams at “There’s No One Right Way to Be Creative.” \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

My college notes on the 17th-century poet John Donne were cautious and circumspect. My feelings fairly burst with yearning, spiritual and erotic. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[1864,1088,1865,34,1866,1867,1868,1869,1459,1870,197,575],"class_list":["post-48357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-batter-my-heart","tag-book-openers-2","tag-doctor-atomic","tag-dont-miss","tag-john-adams","tag-john-donne","tag-music","tag-opera","tag-poetry","tag-robert-oppenheimer","tag-the-writing-room-2","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}