Overview of metaphysical poetry and poets

1. METAPHYSICAL
POETRY
Warhol, Remake of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, 1482), c.1984

2. concerned with the fundamental
problems of the nature of the
universe and man’s function or
place in life
Meaning of Metaphysical
Metaphysical poetry
METAPHYSICAL

3. Metaphysical poetry was written in the
17th century by British poets. These
poets did not term themselves
“metaphysical poets;” the name came
much later as Samuel Johnson
attempted to classify the type of
poetry that came from this period.

4. Rejected the classic Elizabethan style
Elizabethan Metaphysical
• Ornamental diction
• Natural imagery
• Heartfelt emotion
• Regular meter
• Love and nature
• Plain diction
• Unusual imagery
• With and intellect
• Irregular meter
• Faith and death

5. Metaphysical Poets
• John Donne
• George Herbert
• Henry Vaughan
• Andrew Marvell
Wrote on contrary subjects and points of view

6. What is a metaphysical poem?
• They are brief but intense meditations, characterized by use
of intellect, wit, irony and wordplay.
• Uses reason and argument.
• Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and stanza)
is the underlying (and often hardly less formal) structure
of the poem's argument.
Typical Themes
• Love
• War
• Honor
• Courtly
Behavior
Main Philosophy: Carpe diem

7. METAPHYSICAL POETRY - QUALITIES
The Metaphysical poets are obviously not the only poets
to deal with these subject matters, so here are some
qualities that define the movement:
 Poems presented in the form of an argument
 Approbation of wit
 Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns
 Use of scientific terminology
 Paradoxes and Conceits

8. METAPHYSICAL POETRY - THE CONCEIT
A conceit is an extended, exaggerated metaphor that
makes a complex or very surprising comparison.
Example:
“Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind;
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy
body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy
sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with
them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body.”
Here Romeo compares Juliet to a boat in a storm. The
comparison is an extended metaphor in which he

9. Forrest Gump
Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna
get.
• How is this conceit?
• What is unusual about the comparison?
• How can it be considered “extended?”

10. Firework
Katy Perry
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting thought the wind
Wanting to start again
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards
One blow from caving in
Do you ever feel already buried deep
Six feet under scream
But no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you
You just gotta ignite the light
And let it shine
Just own the night
Like the Fourth of July
'Cause baby you're a firework
Come on show 'em what your worth
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y
Baby you're a firework
Come on let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
You're gonna leave 'em fallin' down down down
You don't have to feel like a waste of space
You're original, cannot be replaced
If you only knew…

11. Firework
Katy Perry
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting thought the wind
Wanting to start again
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards
One blow from caving in
Do you ever feel already buried deep
Six feet under scream
But no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you
You just gotta ignite the light
And let it shine
Just own the night
Like the Fourth of July
'Cause baby you're a firework
Come on show 'em what your worth
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y
Baby you're a firework
Come on let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
You're gonna leave 'em fallin' down down down
You don't have to feel like a waste of space
You're original, cannot be replaced
If you only knew…

12. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.
We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility -
• The entire poem is an extended conceit.
Dickinson is using a carriage ride to
describe a person dying,
• Dickinson describes the slowness of old age
through the slowness of the carriage.
• She also showcases death like the setting of
the sun.
• The poem ends with the carriage stopping
at a house, which is "a'swelling in the
ground," or their grave.

13. The Flea John Donne
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than
married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage
temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you,
w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of
jet.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me
is;
The entire poem uses a flea bite as a way
to talk a lover into a sexual relationship.
Donne uses creative and complex
analogies to compare their sexual
merger to the bite of a flea.
In addition, he argues that since
their blood already mixed
in the flea, they are
already connected.
It sucked me first, and
now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two
bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this
cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss
of maidenhead;

14. Assignment
• Write your own conceit.
• Choose a topic below and write a
conceit making an unusual comparison
• Include a 3-4 line extension describing
the comparison.
• Do not simply explain the metaphor.

15. Jon Donne (1572-1631)
Considered one of the most significant metaphysical poets of his time
• Colloquialism
FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
• Brevity
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.
• Questions – or interrogatives ‘
I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved. Were we not wean'd till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the ’seven sleepers' den?
 The accumulative nature of the questions here enacts the
whirring of an imagination made ‘childishly’ excited by the power
of love.
• Eclectic and Obscure
 Most of the poems of John Donne are so obscure and ambiguous that a common
reader cannot grasp the meaning of a single line. This obscurity and ambiguity has
led him to be regarded as the most difficult poet to be understood.

16. George Herbert (1593-1633)
• Follower of Jon Donne
• Differences
 simplicity of diction and metaphor
 poetic works devoted to God
 less intellectual, more earnest
Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

17. Andrew Marvell
• Cavalier (light-hearted) attitude
• Intellectually witty tone
• Fusion of thought and feeling
• Colloquial & argumentative
• Philosophic & reflective
No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

18. “To His Coy Mistress”
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which
way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your
heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

19. “To His Coy Mistress”
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying
near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms
shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to
dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private
place,
But none, I think, do there
embrace.

20. “To His Coy Mistress”
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped
power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough
strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our
sun
Stand still, yet we will make him
run.

21. “To His Coy Mistress”
• Entire poem written in couplets
 Two lines of rhymed poetry
• Uses iambic tetrameter
 eight syllables per line
• Uses enjambment
 running on of a thought from one line to
the next
• Divided into three (3) primary sections indicated by
indentations
• Each section is basically part of an argument (or
claim)
1. Claim
2. Counterclaim
3. Conclusion

22. Annotation #1:
1. Read through the poem quickly
2. Define the following words (and any additional
words you do not understand):
• vaster
• quaint
• transpire
• Ganges
• Humber
• coy
• amorous
• devour
• languish
3. Read the poem again more thoroughly.
4. Highlight the following phrases and try to
determine what they mean or reference:
• “before the Flood”
• “this state”
• “Time’s winged
Chariot”
• “marble vault”
• “worms...”
• “vegetable love”

23. Annotation #2: (Group)
In Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress, the
speaker tries to persuade his mistress to yield
to his sexual advances. It is broken up into
three (3) main arguments.
Reread the poem more thoroughly, and label
each of the three (3) sections:
• Claim
• Counterclaim
• Conclusion
Next to each section, briefly explain the speaker’s
argument to the woman.

24. Answer Questions