Month: December 2025

In his youth, poet John Donne wrote racy libertine verse that insulted women and advocated for intercourse with multiple partners. The subject matter of his poems changed when he fell in love with his employer’s niece, Anne More, and married her. Nuptial bliss seemed to alter Donne’s outlook and priorities, which can be seen reflected in his later works, works like “The Sun Rising” and “The Canonization”. It’s easy to imagine Donne composing these odes to and about Anne. As a writer, Donne belongs to the school of poetry known as ‘Metaphysical’ poetry. Metaphysical poetry is widely known for containing a ‘conceit’: an odd and lengthy comparison between two things that bear little in common. For instance, Donne once wrote a poem where he compared a tear to a navigator’s globe. Conceits differ from simple metaphors in that they are sustained throughout the length of the poem; they can also be played with by reversing the conceit, adding new conceits, and so on.

Donne’s “The Sun Rising” is a stellar example of his wit, dexterity, and authenticity of sentiment. The speaker and his beloved (let’s presume that they are Donne and Anne) awake next to each other in bed. They are so content with the scene and so very in love that they fear any intrusion on their perfect bliss. But intruded upon they are are, only it’s not his employer nor her father, but the morning sun peering through the window and the curtains like a prying neighbor. The rising sun signals the start of a new day and chores to be done, appointments to be kept, food to be bought and prepared, and so on. It’s normally regarded as a harbinger off possibility, for the day is young and anything could happen. But Donne and Anne rue the intruding sun, for it is an interruption on their intimacy and love:

“Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,/ Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of

time.” (lines 9-10)

Donne and Anne feel that they are above such mortal constraints as time; they believe that their love frees them from having to rise and attend to their duties. Donne implies that love keeps its own hours and schedule. Indeed, the pair believe that they are exactly where they should be: in bed and in love.

Donne is so angry at the intrusion of the sun that he starts calling the sun unsavory names, like “Busy old fool” (1), “unruly” (1), and “Saucy pedantic wretch.” (5). This is Donne’s conceit: he has personified the sun, treating it as if it were a person. He suggests other things the sun should go do in place of intruding upon the couple, telling the orb to “….go chide/ Late school boys and sour prentices,/ Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,/ Call country ants to harvest offices….” (5-8), anything other than disturb his love. Donne is petulantly peeved at the sun, an inanimate thing, and responds by acting as if the sun were intentionally interrupting his lying with his beloved Anne. In Donne’s view, not only is the sun intruding, it is actively choosing to do so. He asks of the sun: “Why dost thou thus /Through windows and through curtains call on us?” (2-3) The lovers want to be left alone, and the intruding beams of light are interrupting their time- together as if the sun had knocked at the door and then burst into their chamber.

Donne’s response is to flip the conceit and aver that he is the sun and, thus, has all of the powers and attributes of the star. He mocks the sun for presuming that it has any power in this situation, asking: “Thy beams, so reverend and strong/ Why shouldst thou think?” (11-12), which is Donne’s way of dismissing the sun’s strength and influence. He then boasts that he, himself, is the sun and asserts that “I could eclipse and cloud them (the sun’s beams) with a wink.” (14). Not only is Donne now the sun, but he can do what the sun does “with a wink”, that is to say, more easily. The only thing preventing him from making good on his boast is the fact that, if he did, his beloved would not be able to see him: “But that I would not lose her sight so long.” (14) He then goes on to flip the conceit once more and states that Anne is the sun: “If her eyes have not blinded thine” (15), which suggests that Anne, too, wields the power of the sun’s rays and can blind the true sun just by looking at it.

Donne than avers that everything that is of worth or wealth in the world is already present with him and that, “Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,” (25) He concludes his piece by averring that, since the sun is intent on shining, then it is best that it it warm the couple:

“….and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.” (27-30)

Donne vacillates from ruing the rising sun, to claiming that he is superior, to, finally, putting the star to work in warming the couple as they lie in bed in love.

Another of Donne’s works, “The Canonization”, also focuses on love, and, once again, the speaker is trying to be prevented from loving. The piece opens mid- intervention: someone or a group of people are trying to dissuade the speaker from loving, because they deem the love immoral, impractical, inappropriate, or embarrassing. The speaker, however, wants none of this criticism, he retorts, “For God’s sake, hold your tongue, and let me love,” (1) He clearly feels that this unsolicited

advice is unnecessary and lists other critiques that he would rather hear instead, critiques of his manhood, state, age, reputation, and fortune. He would rather be subjected to disapproval of any of these than be prevented from loving.

The speaker has some suggestions of his own for his critics:

“  With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,

                Take you a course, get you a place,

                Observe his honor, or his grace,

Or the king’s real, or his stampèd face

          Contemplate; what you will, approve,

          So you will let me love.” (4-9)

He is essentially telling his detractors that their energies would be better spent on other pursuits; he cares not what they are, so long as he is left alone to love. Presumably, these very pursuits are the things his critics believe the speaker should be striving for. The fact that he is not turns his love into an act of rebellion: he will not do as the others do, he will do what he wants, and that is to love.

The speaker asks the rhetorical question of his critics, “Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?” (10) and proceeds to list all the ways in which his love has not harmed anyone. Rather, life appears to be running its usual course:

“Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

          Litigious men, which quarrels move,

          Though she and I do love.” (16-18)

But his critics are treating his love as if it were a threat to the stability of the status quo and must be contained or halted, a sentiment the speaker is clearly arguing against.

The speaker’s defiant countermove is to frame his love as a spiritually productive entity. He retorts:

“We can die by it, if not live by love,

         And if unfit for tombs and hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;” (28-30)

It’s almost as if the speaker, in a moment of enlightenment or foreseeing the future, has predicted the composition of this very poem. He resists his detractors, refuses their pleas, and, essentially, makes a religion out of his love, canonizing the thing he values above all else.

We were assigned to write a response to three poems we had read in class; I wrote mine as a poem addressing each in turn.

If sturgeon could speak

I doubt they would wax about war or the Confederacy.

Rather, they would lament the numerous dams

That prevent them from reaching their spawning lands,

Or the pollution of every river, lake, and sea

That they desperately try to flee

As it harms their health and re-productivity.

When Death comes I will welcome it with open arms

Not because it possesses any romance or charm

But, though I love life, and always will

I long to know what lies beyond the crest of that hill.

Some say our souls join God in heaven,

But I haven’t believed that since I was eleven.

I rather think that we release our energy,

And consciousness, whatever that may be,

Goes on like an eternal Turing Machine

Running the same program indefinitely.

A once grand house, dissected into tiny living spaces,

Where the residents greet each other with sagging faces,

Because it’s hard to squeeze a dollar from a dime and pay rent

In this blight stricken tenement.

A shared bath and a dream deferred

Are all anyone is allowed in this neighborhood.

Chaucer was, of course, himself heavily invested in language, since he wrote both for pleasure and to fill his coffers. He read and spoke a number of different languages, including English, Latin, Italian, and French. For a man of his day, he was quite the linguaphile. As someone who was knowledgeable about language and also profited by his pen, it is only fitting that he should compose a tale along the line of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”, which is wholly centered around language and the power of words, flattery in particular.

“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is written in the style of a ‘mock-epic’, meaning that it uses grandiose language, the sort of diction usually reserved for the epic genre, except that here this elevated eloquence is used ironically to tell the tale of a rooster living in an ordinary barnyard of a poor old widow. Right away the reader is made aware of the elevation in style: the rooster, as opposed to being named Tom or John, is given the pretentious sounding name of “Chanticleer.” (404) This was actually a common name for roosters in folk tales and is derived from the French name Chantecler, meaning “clear singer”.

To wit, Chanticleer is noted for his very precise, very clear, and very pleasant crow, “In all the land, at crowing he’d no peer./ His voice was mellower than the mellow organ/ You hear in church on feast-days…” (404) Chaucer is only two stanzas into his poem and already he is touting the powerful qualities of vocalizations, “And where he lived, his crowing told the hour/ Better than any clock in abbey-tower.” (404) Given that the church was the corner-stone of Medieval society and, yet, Chanticleer keeps better time than the church, Chaucer is subtly inserting the power and influence of language over large and powerful institutions, or else he is suggesting that these institutions are at the mercy of words and that their very power is derived from language and how it is wielded. Either interpretation is somewhat flirting with danger, as the church and its doctrine/ power were not concepts that were openly challenged.

Chaucer truly highlights the strength of language and its ability to sway behavior from one course of action to a wholly different one in the part of the poem where Chanticleer meets the “…black fox, iniquitous and sly…” (413) hiding in a bed of cabbage. Chanticleer’s first reactions are aversion and fear:

“At this he never felt less wish to crow,

But, chattering a ‘cok-cok’, he leapt up

Like someone in a panic, terror struck….

He would have fled, had not the fox exclaimed,

‘Good sir, where are you off to? I’m your friend!

Alas that you should be afraid of me!” (415)

The fox uses the persuasive power of language to disarm Chanticleer and halt his flight; furthermore he uses copious amounts of “blandishments and flattery” (416), the ‘oil of communication’, to dupe Chanticleer into closing his eyes and exposing his neck, a vulnerable position for any creature. But Chanticleer, fooled by the fox’s complimenting his father’s as well as his own singing, readily acquiesces to the fox’s cajoling to, “…sing for sweet saint charity!/ Show me if you can emulate your father!”. (416) Chaucer is making the very clear comment on the power and influence that words, when yielded deftly, can not only alter one’s actions, they can make one act in foolish and dangerous ways.

If words can be used to manipulate, the natural antithesis of this would be the power of words to motivate the masses to act for the greater good or to respond to a threat, as Chaucer illustrates by having Pertelote sound the alarm, resulting in the denizens of the barnyard to coalesce and advance on the retreating fox, thereby giving Chanticleer his opportunity to use his words to save his life:

“…if I were in your place,

So help me God, I’s turn round and say this:

‘Go home, you stupid yokels! Plague on you!

Now I’m at the wood’s edge , what can you do?’” (418)

Now it’s time for the fox to play the dupe, for he, too, falls victim to suggestion and pride and opens his mouth to speak, upon which Chanticleer escapes. Chaucer’s point that no one is immune to the influence of words is made patently clear.

If Chaucer is underscoring the power of language and sound, he is also, and equally importantly, stating a contradictory yet complimentary fact: there is a power in silence, as well. Had Chanticleer not fallen for the fox’s flattery and refused to sing, he would have never been caught. Likewise, had the fox ignored Chanticleer’s suggestion, he would have had a sure meal. As Chaucer, himself, wrote:

“Bad luck to him who knows no better than

To talk too much when he should hold his tongue.” (419)