"Death, be not proud"

"Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but they pictures be,

Much pleasure - then, from thee much more must flow" (4-6).

John Donne's "Death, be not proud" was a very nice poem for a variety of reasons, some of which are not nice.  For one, the title of them poem immediately told me that the poem was an apostrophe towards death - or atleast I hope so, since this is the first time that I have noticed a work being an apostrophe.  Also, since this poem is fourteen lines, my English teacher taught me that it is probably going to be a sonnet with a call to action in the last six lines.

The title conveys the message that the speaker will be telling us all the reasons that death is not as mighty as it thinks it is.  I smell personification and lemon cleaner, the latter being more prevalent.  The above lines did not make sense to me until I started typing that last sentence, but now I actually find the excerpt quite humorous.  Let me just paraphrase them for you:

"Dear death, you cannot kill me, because

I, like everyone, enjoy naps

and death is just a long nap."

This, my dear friend, is flawless logic if I have ever heard any.  The speaker does not fear death per se, but the speaker is definitely trying to rap his mind around the idea that death is not something that should be considered so... deadly?  Let me explain (I am getting graded on that part after all).  If the speaker fears death - which is predestined by fate or just blind chance (a.k.a. inevitable) - then what happens after you die?  See, this is where the call to action happens!  The speaker actually gives me the answers in a barrage of paradoxes - thanks for making it more difficult on me.  Since death is just a nap, and everyone wakes up from a nap, after death there will be nothing for the speaker to fear then.

P.S.  Did John Donne just pass Emily Dickinson in the latest label war?

"The Apparition"

"Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat, wilt lie

A verier ghost than I" (12-3).

In "The Apparition" by John Donne, I kept thinking about how this completely negates everything I learned from Casper: The Friendly Ghost.  I felt like the tone was definitely revengeful.  Donne creates this tone by his very scary imagery of wanting to get back at an old "murderess" lover.  The diction in this poem confuses me.  Literally, it sounds like the speaker is truly a ghost, but I think that it was more metaphoric for killing the speakers sanity.  This really only makes sense logistically and does not have much text support (other than maybe line 8 and 13).  If the speaker wants revenge, then simply being a ghost would leave them incapable of any physical ability for revenge.  I think that the idea of a ghost is a metaphor for the speaker being invisible to the former lover.  In line 13, the speaker wants to make his old lover a "verier ghost."  I took this to mean that the speaker is not a ghost, but that he wants to make the cause of his broken heart a true ghost (e.g. dead).

"Batter my heart, three-personed God"

"Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me" (12-14).

"Batter my heart, three-personed God" by John Donne is an excellent example of how poets are able to write in a multitude of styles and not always confuse me.  I definitely learned that this poem can be summarized in four words.

Paradox after annoying paradox.

While the word paradox is fun to type and say, the implications in a poem like this go far beyond the realm of imagination - big words are fun!  Anyways, the first sentence introduces the idea of "battering" someone's heart in order to heal it.  This is basically the equivalent of telling someone to stab me in the head because I have a headache, but it makes sense in context.  The speaker has turned towards the Devil's influence and needs to have the evil hammered out of "him."  (Can we just make this understanding that all speakers are guys unless it is explicitly stated otherwise?)

Another paradox is in the last two lines (thank you question 3).  It is odd to think that by trapping the speaker, that God will be freeing his thoughts, but it is more symbolic of starting a new leave (is that the phrase?) without the Devil's influence on his life.

The last line of the poem is also a paradox (shocker).  Basically, without God intruding on the speaker's personal bubble - is that a nice way to put it? - the speaker will never experience His grace.

P.S. I enjoy the time in class to read the poems.

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"

"If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two" (25-26).

In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne, I can honestly say that I have no clue what it is about.  I really thought that I understood the meaning, but the questions at the end completely negate everything that I thought the poem meant.  The one thing I can say with almost 25 percent certainty is that the speaker is not about to die, but rather go on a journey.  The simile I posted above is the only one that I can find, but there are apparently another two I am missing a long with a metaphor?  It was also what leads me to believe that the speaker is about to go on a journey, since you would not really need a compass when you die.

I also understand that there was an earthquake which killed many and left the rest stranded to leave the town behind?  This might be the source of the contrast between the journey and the dying, but I honestly have no clue.

Another small observation that I made that probably means nothing at all is that the speaker said "Care less" and not "careless" in line 20.

Refer to the picture below for the expressions I made while studying this poem.