Metaphysical Poets – Metaphysical Poetry is Remarkable For It’s Wit and Conceit
Defining Metaphysical Poetry
John Dryden, in his Discourse Concerning Satire (1693), remarked that John Donne in his poetry “affects the meta physics”. After that it was Samuel Johnson who elaborated the term “metaphysics” in his Life of Cowley by refereeing to the fantastic form of Donne’s poetry.
This tern was generally applied to the group of the 17th century poets who were employing similar poetic imagery and ideas. The secular poetry and religious both were affected by this type of poetry. Samuel Johnson described it as heterogeneous yoking together of their ideas by violence.
By analyzing the term, we note that ‘meta’ means beyond and ‘physics’ means sensuous. Metaphysics means going beyond the realm of mind. The far-fetched imagery and conceit takes us the far off world.
Eliot praised the metaphysical poets for precisely the quality that is the unity of thought and feeling whereas Dryden and Johnson criticized the “metaphysical” nature of the poetry for its excessively philosophical and intellectual style which they felt as resulting in a confusion.
Metaphysical Poets
The writers of the 17th centuries who employed figures of speech, wit and conceit in very striking manner called metaphysical poets. Donne, in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, compares two lovers’ souls to a pair of compasses. Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw are some of the other names.
This metaphysical temper pervades in the odes of Keats, the ballads of Coleridge, the narrative poems of Wordsworth and the poetry of Stevens, Hopkins and Dylan.
The Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry
It is the type of poetry which is very difficult to understand at first reading. The poet puts hard efforts in its composition. And therefore, readers feel the same efforts when it comes to reading and understanding the poems.
Many complain that metaphysical poetry is difficult to understand. It is so because it contains hard odd and unexpected ideas into very little space. Therefore, ordinary readers get perplexed at the meaning of the poetry. The beauty of the poetry lies in its strangeness.
Metaphysical is a poetic style where figurative language is used for producing meditative poetic arguments. Donne’s poetry is thus in sharp contrast to the mellifluousness and idealized view of human nature of Elizabethan poems.
