John Donne

This article first appeared in the Irish Independent's Written Word supplement in January 2015.

John Donne (b. 1572) was the son of a  successful London merchant who died when Donne was only 4 years old.  His family were ‘recusant’ Roman Catholics which means they remained loyal to the Catholic Church despite being persecuted by the English crown for so doing.  Donne attended Oxford University from the very young age of 11 and also studied in Cambridge but he could not received a degree from either institution as he would have had to swear an oath against his faith if he had.

In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children.  Anne died tragically at the age of 33 giving birth to their twelfth child who was stillborn. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest because King James I persistently ordered him to do so. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a member of parliament in 1601 and in 1614.

His poems are noted for their passionate, sensual style and include sonnets, religious poems, love poems, elegies, satires, Latin translations and sermons. The Leaving Cert course features a representative collection of both serious and humorous love poems and a selection of his ‘holy sonnets’ where he addresses God directly.

Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. Batter My Heart demonstrates his use of paradox clearly. In it his soul can only be redeemed by being destroyed: ‘break, blow, burn and make me new’ and the speaker can only find freedom through imprisonment by God: ‘Take me to You, imprison me, for I, Except You enthrall me, never shall be free.’

He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits or extended metaphors. In The Flea the starring insect is compared to a church where the poet and his love have been married:

                        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.

Another example of a conceit  features in Thou Hast Made Me where God is compared to a magnet that will draw the poet up to Heaven: ‘And Thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.’

Romantic Love

Much of Donne’s poetry concerns love between men and women both as a physical bond as in The Flea and as a deeper more emotional bond in The Anniversary, The Sun Rising and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

The Flea deals simply with the act of seduction. The poet’s goal is to lure a young woman to his bed and he will make any argument that might help him succeed, including that a flea has already mixed their blood so why are they waiting?!

            Yet this enjoys before it woo…

                        And this, alas, is more than we would do.

The Flea demonstrates a one-dimensional view of love that consists purely of carnal lust but it has a teasing, humorous tone and isn’t supposed to be taken too seriously.

In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning he argues that the love he shares with his wife is not merely physical but involves a merging of souls: ‘Our two souls, therefore, which are one.’ He compares their souls to the feet of a single compass. His lover’s soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: “Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begun.” He sees their love as eternal and permanent, a message which is repeated in The Anniverarie and The Sun Rising. In these poems love is a deep bond between two people that transcends time and is uneffected by the passing seasons:

                        Only our love hath no decay;

                        This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,

                        Running it never runs from us away,

                        But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

The Sun Rising demonstrates Donne’s use of hyperbole to emphasise the strength and power of his love. He states that love, “no season knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”. Also he claims that his love affair brings them such happiness that kings and princes are but pretending to be as happy as them: ‘Princes do but play us’ and that the whole world is contained within their bedroom:

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.

Sin and Redemption

Donne’s later poetry, written when he was dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, is concerned greatly with religious themes, especially those of sin and redemption. His three ‘Holy Sonnets’ on the Leaving Cert. course all explore these themes.

In Batter my Heart  he uses very striking conceits to depict the threat of sin in his life. Sin has hijacked his heart like invaders taking over a town, sin traps him like a woman betrothed to her true love’s enemy. He begs God to fight for him for it is only in God’s grace he can be free from sin:

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

He also feels weighed down with sin in Thou Hast Made Me: ‘my feebled flesh doth waste/ By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.’ He depicts himself as being weak and unable to fight temptation without God’s help. In At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners he begs for more time before Judgement Day to make himself worthy of salvation.

Teach me how to repent; for that's as good

As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

Death

As many poets do, Donne explores the theme of death in great depth. In Thou Hast Made Me he questions why God created man only to destroy him later: ‘Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?’ This poem vivdly captures the frailty and indignity of old age with ‘dim eyes’ and ‘feeble flesh’. He is terrified of death and feels that his soul has been corrupted with sin and hell may await him after death: ‘Despair behind, and death before doth cast/ Such terror’.

In At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners he considers all who have died since the dawn of time and paints a dramatic picture of Judgement Day when, according to the Bible, the souls of the dead will return to their bodies.

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;

If he can repent and stay close to God he feels that death will hold no fear for him and begs God for help in Thou Hast Made Me:

                        Thy grace may wing me to prevent his [the devil] art

                        And Thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

Regarded as one of the greatest poets of the sixteenth century, John Donne explored both the deeply spiritual and the raw physical aspects of life. His clear expression of inner conflict and passion for life remains vivid and relevant four hundred years on.

Robert Frost

This article first appeared in the Irish Independent's Written Word supplement in January 2015.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874 but is remembered as a New England, East Coast American poet. The Frost family moved east following the early death of his father, who was an alcoholic. Frost attended Dartmouth College and later Harvard, but never gained a formal degree. He went on to teach and also worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. He didn’t enjoy these jobs, however, feeling his truly calling was as a poet.

Frost is regarded as one of America's leading 20th-century poets and was a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is often called a ‘pastoral poet’, a poet who explores the benevolent effects of nature and country life and he does clearly express the beauty of the New England landscape in many of his poems. He also, however, explores the nature of humanity and human relationships in great depth including the darker, gloomier side of life.

In the course of this article I will explore four themes: nature, everyday life, communication and youth versus maturity, and Frost’s distinctive style.

Nature

Frost is famed for his representations of the New England countryside where he lived. His descriptions vividly capture rural settings across many different seasons, for example, his description of the icy debris left after an ice storm: ‘Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away/ You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.’

He often uses natural settings as ‘jumping off’ points for exploring deeper philisophical issues. The Tuft of Flowers explores our shared humanity and Birches explores the idea of escape from the life’s troubles. The speaker in these poems receives consolation and inspiration from nature.

There is sometimes a darker side to nature depicted in Frost’s poems. In Mending Wall nature is associated with dark, supernatural forces; ‘elves’, that repeatedly destroy what man creates. In Design he reminds us that the world is full of dangerous predators as he describes a spider killing a moth.

Everyday Life

Frost is very interested in the activities of everyday life, because it is this aspect of humanity that is the most "real" to him. Even the most basic act in a normal day can have numerous hidden meanings that need only to be explored by a poetic mind. For example, in the poem Mending Wall, the simple act of fixing a stone wall is transformed into an exploration of the need for and purpose of man-made barriers. :

                        Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

                        What I was walling in and walling out,

Frost believed that the emphasis on everyday life allowed him to communicate with his readers more clearly because they could empathize with the struggles that are expressed in his poems and come to their own conclusions.

Communication

Communication, or the lack thereof, is also a significant theme in several of Frost's poems on the Leaving Cert course. He sees it as the only possible escape from the isolation and despair inherent in modern day life. Unfortunately, Frost also makes it clear that communication is extremely difficult to achieve. Frost explores this theme in Acquainted with the Night, in which the speaker is unable to pull himself out of his depression because he cannot bring himself even to make eye contact with those around him: “and dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

Sometimes communication is easier to achieve even in the absence of the other person as in The Tuft of Flowers. As the speaker works turning the grass he notices ‘a leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared’ and feels a deep connection to the mower who had cut the grass earlier that morning.  They had both considered the needs of the butterfly and he concludes: “Men work together… Whether they work together or apart.”

Youth versus Maturity

The adult figures in Frost’s poetry are burdened with a rational, practical approach to life but occasionally the world of imagination and youth calls to them. For example, in Birches, the narrator wishes that he could climb a birch tree as he did in his childhood and leave the rational world behind, if only for a brief moment.

                        So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

                        And so I dream of going back to be..

This ability to escape rationality and indulge in the liberation of imagination seems confined to childhood. After reaching adulthood, the habits of modern life require strict practicality and an acceptance of responsibility. As a result of this conflict, Frost makes the poem Out, Out-- even more tragic, describing a young boy who is forced to leave his childhood behind to work at a man's job and ultimately dies in the process: ‘big boy/ Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart.’

Style

Frost’s style of verse is quite traditional with many of his poems written in blank verse [unrhyming iambic pentameter] with a strict rhyming pattern. Frost also liked to write poetry in the language he heard spoken everyday. The many colloquial phrases in his poetry show this aspect of his style and makes his poetry feel modern:

                        Call it a day, I wish they might have said

                        To please the boy by giving him the half hour

                        That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

In many of his poems, his rhythm is based on the way the human voice groups or assembles words and sounds in spoken language. While many of his poems have a regular amount of syllables and would fit into a traditional system of poetic metre, it is better to listen for the rhythm of the everyday speaking voice in Frost’s poems.

Frost, therefore, is a blend of the traditional and modern poet, exploring traditional and modern themes and using traditional poetic forms and his own innovative techniques to capture the modern voice. John F Kennedy said of him: “he has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding” and he continues to be the most popular American poet of the twentieth century both in the US and around the world.

Othello – Still Relevant in 2015?

This article first appeared in the Irish Independent's Written Word supplement in January 2015.

William Shakespeare’s Othello was first performed for the court of King James I in London in 1604 and was an extremely popular play throughout the seventeenth century. Why is it, however, that are we still studying this play over four hundred years later? In my view the reasons are two-fold: the fascinating characters that haunt its pages and the universal themes that remain a feature of human society to this day.

Othello, the valiant general who worked his way up to a respected position in Venetian society despite being a Moor and Desdamona, the tender, graceful daughter of a Venetian senator who married a Moor without her father’s knowledge are both characters with great depth. They, along with characters like Cassio and Emilia, have a mix of nobility and weakness that makes them appear truly human and thus easy for the audience to identify with.

Iago, the sinister, manipulative and possibly sociopathic ensign on the other hand, seems to have no redeeming features, feeding off other people’s weaknesses and going so far as to murder his own wife. His unwillingness to explain his horrific actions have made him a fascinating enigma for audiences for centuries.  We never truly learn why he did what he did:

                        Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

                        From this time forth I never will speak word.

The central themes of the play: prejudice, jealousy and love, are issues that have remained vitally relevant in human society.  People still struggle to find love, to keep relationships alive through hard times and to understand and relate to people who are very different to themselves whether through cultural, religious or racial differences.

Ireland, over the past twenty years has become a multicultural society with a vast amount of immigration from countries such as Poland, Nigeria, Lithuania and the Phillipines.  As a society we’ve had to face up to our prejudice towards certain communities and institute laws against it.  Othello, too, was an immigrant working in a foreign country and is the victim of racist slurs from his own ensign, Iago: “old black ram”, “thick lips” etc. His relationship with Desdamona is questioned by her father and it is only with articulate humility and dignified restraint that Othello proves himself worthy to Brabantio.

Love and jealousy also remain key elements of the human condition. We are deeply programmed to find a partner to love and feel deeply hurt if we think they love someone else.  The ‘green-eyed monster’ can eat people up inside and, fueled by Iago’s malicious lies, Othello falls into its clutches in the worst possible way. The audience cannot help but feel some sympathy for Othello as his love for Desdamona is destroyed by Iago. Overall Othello inspires a strong emotional reaction in an audience and it is this emotional reaction that keeps people flocking to productions to this day.