The Man Who Outlived Himself: An Appreciation of John Donne-a Dozen of His Best Poems

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

The gentlest adjective that comes to mind to characterize this book is
“regrettable.” From the opening sentence—“Who could imagine a
man who would sleep in his coffin?”—one knows that no serious
critical discussion will be forthcoming.

Repeating the basic format of their No One Else Is Lawrence!
compilation two years ago, Al Purdy and Doug Beardsley, a poet and a
poet-professor, turn their attention to John Donne. First they quote and
discuss 12 of his poems, then reproduce five elegies along with their
own transliterations into modern English, and end with two poems of
their own about Donne’s wife. It sounds promising in theory, but ...

They begin with “The Canonization,” informing us, as if revealing
an insight, that the poem is addressed not to his beloved but to a
disapproving male friend. This is in fact obvious on any intelligent
first reading. A generation ago, only the most confused of
undergraduates thought otherwise. They are puzzled by “Go and Catch a
Falling Star,” hopelessly at sea in interpreting “The Relic,” and
in a discussion of “A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy’s Day” cannot
understand why the Church condemned suicide (which isn’t at issue
anyway).

They confess themselves unable to appreciate the devotional poems,
Beardsley insisting that “in the Holy Sonnets and Divine Meditations
we just get orthodox religious belief,” a remark that seems
spectacularly misinformed. The quality of their historical understanding
is indicated by Beardsley’s remark: “It was a pretty free-swinging
age. Look at the films Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love.” Donne’s
elegies are modernized “to make the poems interesting and readable”!
Personally, I find their versions uninteresting and unreadable; the
combination of 20th-century idiom with 17th-century content ends up as
bizarre (not “bizzare,” as on p.65).

In my time, senior high-school students were expected to do better than
this, yet the dust jacket describes the book as “a must-read for Donne
fans.” Not true, but it makes the vulgarity of the whole enterprise
abundantly clear.