Tag Archives: John Donne

“My thoughts bustle along like a Surinam toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks It’s his birthday today. I’ll … Continue reading

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“Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson

“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s incorrectly-spelled epitaph in Westminster Abbey It’s his birthday today. Ben Jonson did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent was wide and flexible. Everything he wrote feels inevitable. However, as Michael Schmidt writes … Continue reading

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“The fault that I acknowledge in myself is to have descended to print anything in verse.” — John Donne

“So difficult and opaque it is, I am not certain what it is I print.” — first publisher of the work of John Donne It’s his birthday today. John Donne (1572-1631) was a poet and an Anglican priest (born a … Continue reading

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Year in Review: Shooting My Mouth Off in 2020, Part 2

Here’s part 1, a list of things I’ve written for other outlets. This list, then, is a hodge-podge of the things I’ve written here this year. Anyone familiar with this joint knows that I do tribute posts for people’s birthdays. … Continue reading

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The Books: Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats: John Donne

Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine What makes you familiar is this dual obsession; Lust is not what … Continue reading

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November 3: “How ruinous a farm hath man taken, in taking himself!”

Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure: NOVEMBER 3 TUESDAY How ruinous a farm hath man taken, in taking himself! How ready is the house every day to fall down, and … Continue reading

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Dual Obsession

What makes you familiar is this dual obsession; Lust is not what the rutting stag knows It is to take Eve’s apple and to lose The stag’s paradisal look: The love of God comes readily To those who have most … Continue reading

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