What have you discovered about John Donne as we have studied "Holy Sonnet VI" and "The Flea" in the last two weeks? How is Donne different from other poets you have come across? How is he similar? What do you think of his poetry o far? Why?

In the last two weeks, we have been seeing some poems of the English author John Donne.Our teacher in class told us about Donne's life before giving us examples of some of his most famous poems. First of all, John Donne was born during the Xvi and Xvii centuries, and he is recognized now-a-days for being part of the metaphysical poets. Besides being a poet, he was a lawyer and a minister in the Church of England. Despite his work on the English Church on his early years he had the Roman Catholic religion, but he changed it later and become an Anglican. John Donne is well-known for his variety of poems and the way he wrote them. 

So after seeing a little bit of his life, we start to see some of his poems. The first poem of Donne that we saw in class was "The Flea". Honestly, before I read it I thought that it was going to be funny or that it was going to be an irrational poem talking about an insect on nature. But, when we start reading it, I realized that the theme was more about sexuality and love than a simple flea. He introduced the flea as a excuse and a way of persuasion for a man to have sexual relationships with a woman. It is a poem that gives a sexual message to a woman but with hints; John Donne gives double meanings, thing that makes us, at first, go nuts with this poem. Later on the teacher gave us another poem, but these one was not about sex and love. The name of this poem was "Holy Sonnet VI" and we found out so far that another theme that John Donne use on this poems is death. Mainly on "Holy Sonnet VI", he is making an allusion to death, telling it that he is not afraid of it because is like sleeping or resting and that actions makes us feel comfortable, happy and relaxed. We do not have to worry about death, nor fear of it, because (for Donne) is like sleeping. Obviously for finding out the meaning of the poem we had to find out, as a group, the words we do not understand and the semantic fields to know what he was talking about. Even if this poems we have seen like "The Flea" and "Holy Sonnet VI" are short, we found out that we can analyze a lot of things like rhetoric figures, double meanings, themes, etc. 

Comparing Donne to other poets I have known by reading his or her poems, I think John Donne has something the poets that I had read do not have: the use of conceits on his poems. As we know, John Donne was a metaphysical poet which used wit to give his poems certain difference among others and, because he was an scholar, he used to apply that knowledge that he had on his poems in order to make them sound and feel different and with a different meaning.  He used to put sophisticated language and to had the use of paradoxes and ironies. Also, he is known for his sarcasm in some of his poems(specifically the ones about religion). Some similarities that Donne has to the poets that I know is that he uses metaphors to express his ideas, he writes sonnets(like some poets I known like Mario Benedetti, Pablo Neruda, Sor Juana, etc) and has as main themes religion, death, love and sexuality. 

 To my point of view, now I think that his poetry is different of other contemporary authors and the way he writes,obviously, has many antique English words like thou, thee, etc. I like the way he uses double meanings and we have, as students of English Literature, more things to analyze comparing him to other poets that may be more literal. His poems makes me think that he do not put only one meaning on his poems,because he likes to put double meanings on them. I am liking John Donne's poetry, because I am understanding better his way of writing and I am comprehending that he was many rethoric figures on his poems and many semantic fields. Now we are reading and analyzing "Satire III" and I hope this poem will not difficult me at all! :)