Waking to find himself shipwrecked on a strange shore before a dark wood, the pilgrim of the Divine Comedy realizes he must set his sights higher and guide his ship to a radically different port. Starting on the sand of that very shore with Dante, John Freccero begins retracing the famous voyage recounted by the poet nearly 700 years ago. Freccero follows pilgrim and poet through the Comedy and then beyond, inviting readers both uninitiated and accomplished to join him in navigating this complex medieval masterpiece and its influence on later literature. Perfectly impenetrable in its poetry and unabashedly ambitious in its content, the Divine Comedy is the cosmos collapsed on itself, heavy with dense matter and impossible to expand. Yet Dante’s great triumph is seen in the tiny, subtle fragments that make up the seamless whole, pieces that the poet painstakingly sewed together to form a work that insinuates itself into the reader and inspires the work of the next author. Freccero magnifies the most infinitesimal elements of that intricate construction to identify self-similar parts, revealing the full breadth of the great poem. Using this same technique, Freccero then turns to later giants of literature— Petrarch, Machiavelli, Donne, Joyce, and Svevo—demonstrating how these authors absorbed these smallest parts and reproduced Dante in their own work. In the process, he confronts questions of faith, friendship, gender, politics, poetry, and sexuality, so that traveling with Freccero, the reader will both cross unknown territory and reimagine familiar faces, swimming always in Dante’s wake.

This carefully crafted ebook: “Collected Poems of John Donne - A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning + 57 other Songs and Sonnets " is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Content: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning; The Flea; The Good-Morrow; Song : Go and catch a falling star; Woman's Constancy; The Undertaking; The Sun Rising; The Indifferent; Love's Usury; The Canonization; The Triple Fool; Lovers' Infiniteness; Song : Sweetest love, I do not go; The Legacy; A Fever; Air and Angels; Break of Day; [Another of the same] [Break of Day]; The Anniversary; A Valediction of my Name, in the Window; Twickenham Garden; Valediction to his Book; Community; Love's Growth; Love's Exchange; Confined Love; The Dream; A Valediction of Weeping; Love's Alchemy; The Curse; The Message; A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day; Witchcraft by a Picture; The Bait; The Apparition; The Broken Heart; The Ecstacy; Love's Deity; Love's Diet; The Will; The Funeral; The Blossom; The Primrose; The Relic; The Damp; The Dissolution; A Jet Ring Sent; Negative Love; The Prohibition; The Expiration; The Computation; The Paradox; Song: Soul's joy, now I am gone; Farewell to Love; A Lecture Upon the Shadow; A Dialogue Between Sir Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne; The Token; Self-Love "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a metaphysical poem written in 1611 or 1612 for his wife Anne before he left on a trip to Continental Europe. "A Valediction" is a 36-line love poem that was first published in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, two years after Donne's death. Based around the idea of two parting lovers, the poem is notable for its use of conceits and heavy allegory to describe the couple's relationship. John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and priest. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries.

A Study Guide for John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidden Mourning," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

In this book, David Lehman, the longtime series editor of the Best American Poetry, offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column’s plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers. He offers his generous and playful mentorship on forms such as the sonnet, haiku, tanka, sestina, limerick, and the cento and shares strategies for how to build one line from the last. This groundbreaking book shows how pop-up crowds of poets can inspire one another, making art, with what poet and guest editor Angela Ball refers to as "spontaneous feats of language." How can poetry thrive in the digital age? Next Line, Please shows the way. Lehman writes, "There is something magical about poetry, and though we think of the poet as working alone, working in the dark, it is all the better when a community of like-minded individuals emerges, sharing their joy in the written word."