Who were the 'Metaphysical Poets'? [Illustrated]

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4 жыл бұрын

Most of us today are familiar with poetry - in some form or another; but only few are familiar with an important group of poets in the seventeenth century that would later be dubbed the ‘Metaphysical poets’. As these men were not ghosts, what exactly was meant by the label ‘metaphysical’? And what did they all have in common? This video aims to explore the answers to both these questions - by analysing several samples of metaphysical verse.
[Important Note: I say during the video that it was Samuel Beckett who wrote of a ‘race of writers who may be termed the metaphysical poets’. Alas - I misread my own script and credited the wrong Samuel; it was Samuel Johnson who said this. This remark can be found in his ‘Lives of The Most Eminent English Poets’, which I have linked below]
The Bible
www.amazon.co.uk/Bible-Author...
Politics and the English Language (Orwell)
www.amazon.co.uk/Politics-Eng...
Poems (Donne)
www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Poe...
Poems (Cartwright)
www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Poems-W...
Poems (Vaughan)
www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Poe...
Poems (Crashaw)
www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Poe...
Poems (Herbert)
www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Poe...
The Metaphysical Poets (Garnder)
www.amazon.co.uk/Metaphysical...
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (Johnson)
www.amazon.co.uk/Lives-Most-E...
Selected Writings (Poe)
www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Wri...
Selected Letters (Dickinson)
www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-Dick...
- Miles
[Music: Undertow by Scott Buckley / scottbuckley
Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported - CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: bit.ly/undertow-scott-buckley
Music promoted by Audio Library • Undertow - Scott Buckl... ]
EDITING ERRATA: Picture of Shakespeare instead of Henry Vaughan, at 1:42.

Пікірлер: 13

@paulcoleman3081 4 жыл бұрын

This is a really interesting channel with thought-provoking content and this video is beautifully don(n)e. If I were still teaching 16th and 17th poetry to first-year undergraduates, I would have no hesitation in steering them towards this as an introductory overview / talking point. The Flea is amongst my favourite things in the English language: I might quibble that the Renaissance medical concept of sex was that it consisted, literally, of a mingling of the blood and that might subtly inform your reading of Donne's persona's argument. I would also like to point out, if I may, that whereas the role of the women / addressee of this genre of poem is nearly always a silent, passive one, The Flea is important because, although the female voice is not heard, her actions have a great bearing on the narrative flow of the poem. Even if, in threatening, then gleefully killing the flea (between the stanzas, as it were) she merely serves to reinforce Donne's persona's argument, she participates. Great stuff. I hope this sort of response is appropriate.

@BUKCOLLECTOR 2 жыл бұрын

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

@BUKCOLLECTOR 2 жыл бұрын

Enjoyed your poems. And your unique word choices enhanced the poems emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout. I’m a poet specializing in Japanese forms: haiku, tanka, haibun, kyoka, senryu. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a tanka and my haiku, a tribute poem to Bashō’s frog with commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my Basho haiku among her top 10 haiku of all time. What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem and commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us all that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ And my tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~~ -All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florid