Enjoying the poetry of John Donne

[Gori the Grey]

Sorry. I dropped the ball. Yes, I'll get on that.

Even though I've already referenced a couple of poems, where I had intended to start was with an epigram: a short, witty poem. (We'll get back to the Ecstasy, by the way; there's a lot more in it.)

A lot of Donne's poems are versified jokes, or have sections in them that operate as such. The epigrams are just like a modern stand-up comedian's jokes: set-up and punch-line.

Here's the entirety of "A Lame Beggar":

"I am unable," yonder beggar cries,
"To stand or walk"; if he say true, he lies.

Get it? All anyone has to do is :groan: or say "Llamaest Jokes thread is that way," and I'll know we can move on.

But you'll have the molecule out of which Donne often builds his poems.

 

[Farm Boy]

That's a quality dad joke.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Quite a few of MacCaigs poems are jokes.

Flirt

Before he met her
he was a fiddle bow
without a fiddle.
Now he's a part
of her string quartet.

 

[Gori the Grey]

So, MacCaig's going to be the stepping-stone by which I get you to Donne, AmazonQueen. The bonus is that I get to know a new poet!

That's a quality dad joke.

So here's a joke your dad won't tell you (well, depending upon your dad, I guess; does your dad joke with you about venereal diseases?). This one's called "A Licentious Person." As part of the price of this tutorial, you all have to indulge me in my laughing at the school district that explicitly approved The Complete Poems of John Donne, and me thinking: "these people have not read John Donne, if they think he's appropriate for little Johnny and little Donna." This one plays with the expression "as many sins as hairs on his head," but also on the fact that syphilis causes one's hair to fall out. It too is just a two-line epigram:

Thy sins and hairs may no man equal call
For as thy sins increase thy hairs do fall.

Again, I'll I need is the equivalent of a groan and we'll move on.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oh, that's new to me! Didn't even know about the hair thing.

Dad did used to tell "earthy" jokes, but he doesn't really know a ton about VD to be grounded on topic. Totally out of his field of concern.