Done with Donne?

Not quite. I have a couple of comments and I am still wondering about how Donne is one of the Modernists' favorite poet.

Ever since T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” we have been reading modern poetry, almost nonstop. I have come to conclude that Modern poetry is very unique, abstract, and almost random or spontaneous at times. From Williams to Moore, and from Hughes to O’Hara, poetry has notably changed from our much earlier readings of Hopkins or Bryant. After reading Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara, we transitioned into reading John Donne, a more conventional writer, at least I thought so. Class discussion revealed to me that Donne was actually an inspiration to modernist writers. At first I thought how could that be? I thought that the Modernists were against the traditional forms and were in search of something new and refreshing, something entirely new and unique. After reading a couple of Donne’s poem, I felt pretty sure that those poems were pretty traditional. The topics were not as traditional as I thought because of the way he executed his work, but his use of language was.

The Modernists succeeded at bringing out new material in the literary field but at the same time, were still able to admire the work of Donne, seemingly the antithesis of Modernist work. It seems almost impossible, but a closer analysis at Donne’s techniques and style is able to lead a reader towards seeing Donne in a new light, perhaps the light in which Modernist writers saw Donne. Donne’s poems were love poems, though not straight forward, they can easily be identified as being love themed. It doesn’t seem like a topic that modernist writers would be interested in since most of what we’ve read that were part of the modern era focused on societal issues, death, and personal thoughts. From the modern poetry we have read, I couldn’t really grasp the main ideas of the poems. I rather enjoyed the fact that Donne’s poems were not filled with seemingly random comments with potential high sounding interpretations, but has high sounding interpretations that can be put up for discussion.

Even though I was confused about how the Modernists came to admire Donne, I tried to make sense of that possibility. In class, I tried to reason that out by saying that Donne seems a bit sarcastic. However, I now feel that he has somewhat of an insulting tone, which I took as sarcastic, that is extremely witty. The cleverness of his poems could possibly be the reason why the modernists admired his work. There are bits of humor throughout his poems even though the topic of love seems rather serious. “The Sun Rising” was amusing. Donne would sound as if he is insulting the sun for waking him. He even goes as far as undermining the Sun’s powerful rays by say that “[he] could eclipse and cloud them with a wink.” How bold!