Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the

intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the

profound areas of experience, especially about love, romantic and sensual; about

man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about

Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are brief but intense meditations,

characterised by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal

structure (of rhyme, metre and stanza) is the underlying (and often hardly less

formal) structure of the poem's argument.

Wit and conceit were both aspects of a mental set, shared by writers looking for

analogies and connections between things.

Definition: an idea or concept expressed in a clever way. Often took form in

ingenious and consciously far-fetched metaphor. Conceits attempt to capture elusive

insights into the nature of human experience, which are partly feelings and partly

intellectual perceptions. They play between literal and figurative meaning.

Definition: the apt association of thought and expression, calculated to surprise and

speaker, the speaker in fact calls and begs for them, thus a twisted paradox.

that is physical, emotional, mutual and content with no sense of sin or need to

Donne had roots going deep into medieval Catholicism, born to well-to-do Roman

capturing the nature of humanity. While Donne is exploring these things through his

Some topics in this essay:
Drury Analysis, Batter Heart, Dean St, Argument Donne, God†Kensinger, War Restoration, Lewis Modernഊs, Songs Sonnets, Sunne Rising, Platonic Petrachan, love poetry, speaker god, experience love, sunne rising, relationship god, batter heart, courtly love, songs sonnets, view love, human experience, valediction forbidding mourning, relationship speaker god, critic helen gardner, lover implied listener, intellectual climate changed,