METAPHYSICAL POETRY an introduction

1. METAPHYSICAL POETRYan introduction Neel Kamal Puri Department of English

2. The Name as Literary Slang The term �metaphysical poets� came into being long after the poets to whom we apply it were dead. It was coined by Samuel Johnson as a sort of nickname, more with the idea to satirise than appreciate. He did not think that these poets had the right to be called metaphysical in the true sense, though this school of poetry is characterised by both love poetry and devotional poetry. It was seen as love poetry that would perplex the minds of the fair sex with speculations of philosophy rather than winning them over with the softness of love, as confusing the pleasures of love with the pleasures of puzzles.

3. In the context of time Chronologically metaphysical poetry belongs to the Seventeenth Century but its spirit is modern. And that is why metaphysical poetry did not find many admires in its time. It was rediscovered, appropriated and appreciated more by the moderns and the metaphysical poets are, in that context, seen as out true literary ancestors.

4. Characteristics � appeals to the intellect A poem develops as an argument that has to be followed more with the mind than with the heart. For example Andrew Marvell�s poem �To His Coy Mistress� is structured in the format of If-But-Therefore. The reader is held to a line of argument and not invited to pause and muse It therefore challenges the reader to be agile of mind, pay attention and read on. Metaphysical poetry is critiqued for being somewhat elitist.

5. Closely woven And following from its development as an argument is the corollary that the poem is very closely packed like a limited frame in which words and thoughts are compressed or a �box where sweets compacted lie�. This then leads to a sinewy strength of style which came to be known as strong lined poetry.

6. Conceits Conceits are similies but with a difference � comparisons which strike the reader as being just only after some deliberation. A comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness. When Donne compares two lovers to the two legs of a compass or Marvell puts in images of birds of prey and cannibalism when talking of the act of love making, we have to concede justness while admiring ingenuity.

7. Abrupt openings Metaphysical poetry is famous for its abrupt, personal openings in which a man speaks to his mistress, or addresses his God, or sets a scene, or calls us to mark this or that. �For God�s sake hold your tongue and let me love,� says Donne. And though we are catapulting metaphysical poetry from the seventeenth century to modern times, yet we have to remember that this was poetry that emerged from the great age of Elizabethan drama of the sixteenth century and therefore too the dramatic opening of these poems.

8. Conversational style You cannot have a heated argument in the language of poetry. And since it is argument that forms the core of metaphysical poetry, it lends itself quite naturally to a conversational style. Its soul is the vivid imagining of a moment of experience or of a situation out of which the need to argue, or persuade, or define arises.

9. Religious Poetry The strength of the religious poetry of the metaphysical poets is that they bring to their praise and prayer and meditation so much experience that is not in itself religious. Here too the poems create for us particular situations out of which prayer or meditation arises.

10. Metaphysics of the metaphysicals Metaphysical poems therefore have the right to the title metaphysical in its true sense, since they raise, even when they do not explicitly discuss, the great metaphysical question of the relation of the spirit and the senses. They raise it not as an abstract problem, but through the reality of experience.