A colleague at the UMW graduation ceremonies today asked me if I would be offering helpful commentary in my Donne podcasts for all those folks who have trouble with poetry, especially older verse. I’m mulling over the request and would be grateful for any opinions my readers\/listeners might have. Commentary can be very helpful. On the other hand, including commentary on the podcast would mean you’d have to fast-forward through my remarks every time you wanted to go straight to the poem. Perhaps I could include commentary on the blog and not on the podcast, but that puts listeners at a disadvantage. Interesting quandary.<\/p>\n
Tonight I’ll simply read the poem. It’s one of Donne’s most famous lyrics, and one of his more bitter railings against women. Donne’s love of paradox and puzzle leads him to use various impossibilities to illustrate a cynical mood about life and love. The poem is dramatic, addressing its reader forcefully and directly, as Donne usually does. It’s also meant to be set to music, but that’s for another time.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to know how seriously Donne means the reader to take the poem. Is he really as bitter as the poem sounds? Is it a moment’s mood or a settled opinion? Should we laugh or boo? Hard to know. One little point of interest: I think T. S. Eliot’s “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each” from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” owes something to this poem.<\/p>\n
Here is “Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star<\/a>,” by John Donne.<\/p>\n