do you know whats great about God
what
there’s three of him so they can all beat you up at once
what?
like if you asked God to beat you
all of
all three persons of him could whale on you pretty efficiently
why would you want God to beat you
what
I mean…why would you want God to beat you?
what?
I don’t think most people want God to beat them at all
I mean
what do you mean?
John?
John?
the pope?
more like
nope
John
Romanism?
more like
no-man…ism
what is this about
just working on some snappy reminders about the dangers of Catholicism
I’m not Catholic
good
good good good
see to it that you stay that way
okay
Nicene Creed??
more like
not-so-nice-ene creed
John
clerics???
more like clerICKS
JOHN
if you think about it
doing it is kind of like being a saint
how do you mean
i just mean it
do you think people would get it if i compared a woman’s corset to like…a version of my dick that she carried around with her inside her dress all day
what
like do you think i could make that obvious enough
i think you could make it obvious enough, yes
sometimes i worry people will miss the dick parts of my poetry
i don’t think you should worry about that
i usually find it pretty clear
hey what do you think of this
“If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.”
that’s really lovely, John
it’s about how me and this girl are like the legs on a compass
like we belong together you know
beautiful
but it’s also about how my penis is like a compass?
did you feel like i effectively communicated both of those things?
like how she and i are meant for each other but also my dick is like a mathematical instrument, made of precision and steel?
right
that’s why I kept calling it erect and firm?
sure, sure
my dick is like a compass
yep
oh shit i could probably work a scissoring metaphor in here too?
you don’t think that would be maybe too many metaphors
don’t be naive
i mean
like
was it clear to you that poem i wrote about America was really about my dick
it was
ok good
because i was wondering if i could make it clearer?
“O my America! my new-found-land,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee”
how’s that, dick-wise
no i think that’s super clear
it’s about how i’m only happy when i’m naked with women?
for sex?
right
with my dick out?
that’s what makes me happy?
no, right, yeah, i’m following
okay
okay phew
oh wow do you realize “damnable cleric” rhymes with “ramm’d with my dick”
sure does
holy shit this is going to change everything
holy shit this is going to change poetry forever
*young John Donne gets up from the dinner table* “I’m donne!”
Mrs. Donne: no you are NOT, and that has never been funny. Finish your vegetables!
John Donne: *runs up to his room to write dick poetry*
Mrs. Donne (muttering): i am so donne with this kid
He actually wrote a poem to that effect, after his wife married him and was cut off by her family, leaving the Donnes broke:
“John Donne
Anne Donne
Undone”
And that’s the whole thing.
I always thought that was really sweet, and interpreted it not in a ‘oh crap we have no money’ but in how deeply in love he was that he was undone.
I think his gravestone says “John Donne, Undone”
I definitely read “like if you asked God to beat you” as “like if you asked God to beat you OFF.”
I feel like hoping for wet dreams because you are religiously avoiding masturbation is kinda like asking God to beat you off
I… don’t think that’s an unreasonable way to interpret that, though.
you’re not WRONG
I mean, it’s John Donne. This is not an unreasonable interpretation.
Especially since that poem is “God, please ravish my heart, just really beat the crap out of it, then take me with your mighty God-dick.”
so
hey
you know that flea?
What flea?
you know
the one that just bit you
Ugh
Yes?
it bit me too
well
it bit me *first*
So…?
so it’s like
like
our blood is getting mixed
in that flea
which is of course what sex is
What?
so since we already metaphorically did it
let’s make the metaphor reality 😉
WHAT
That was pretty much what my high school self said when my English teacher explained that poem to us. And what my students said to me a decade later.
Looks like logic, quacks like logic, … is not logic.
I’ve always found it fun to look through it with students and try to pinpoint when each class goes from saying, “Okay, I kind of follow that reasoning” to “AW HELL NO.”
that flea just totally sucked you
umm, yes, yes it did
and now it’s totally sucking me
okay
SUCKING. heh.
yep, that’s what it’s doing
hey, do you know what an ‘s’ sometimes looks like in contemporary typeface?
umm, yes, it looks like an ‘f’
SUCKING. heh.
OMG I love this poem and have read it many times and I know about the long S and yet I never thought of that! My day has been made!
I love some of Donne but oh my god The Flea is one of the grossest poems ever and if you have to try to convince a woman to have sex with you by comparing sex to a FLEA you should not get any sex.
YES THIS LOVE
When we were studying the flea poem in class, my friends and I kept snickering how Donne was obviously infested with fleas and despite his gross flea situation he still thought he had a shot with this woman.
Ahhhhh, John Donne! Equal parts religion and dicks, and I am here for it!
SAME.
Ahhhhhh, Ted Haggard! Equal parts religion and dicks, and he was there for them!
The one thing I retained from my high-school Poets and Poetry class was this: when in doubt, a poem is always about sex, death, or Jesus. And if it’s Donne, it’s all three.
All my favorite dude poets have in common a grand unified theory that all kinds of love are the same love, or at least worth exploring in overlapping terms: Marvin Gaye, Donne, D.A. Powell. (Edited to add, in accordance with Heathered, who pointed it out downthread: Prince also belongs on this list.)
Possibly relatedly, I am a preacher’s kid, and my first sexual feelings were in response to reading Song of Songs.
Oh Donne. So much God, and so much dicks.
to call this less sophisticated than most theology would be deeply intellectually dishonest
John Donne: Poems About Fucking
(And Also God, but With a Motif of Fucking.)
John Donne, Volume 2: On God and My Dick
No Dick Is An Island
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
And yet Teresa of Avila gets ragged on more for her sensual imagery….
I do deeply love John Donne’s poetry – I like the emotion and passion he portrays, because it me.
Me too. You gotta love a guy who can talk about God and sex in the exact same rapturous tone.
Also, a Renaissance poet who wrote poems for the specific purpose of seducing his legally wedded wife is a rare gem indeed.
I mean, God-talk, lame puns, and sexy poems are basically the three things I love most in life, so I’m legally obligated to love Donne.
I love Donne. So filthy and so great!
My contribution: the lines “To enter in these bonds, is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be” are immediately made more hilarious if you imagine the aquatic-mammal sort of seal.
This whole …. thing, made Revelations of John SO CONFUSING for my younger self.
(Pssst, not to get all technical or anything, but “cleric” would have generally been used to refer to anyone in orders in those days. Not only Roman Catholic priests.)
mm, it’s semi-anachronistic but Donne also uses cleric/clergy semi-interchangeably to refer to priests in Catholic orders in Pseudo-Martyr, so I feel like I’m square
also anti-clericalism is a familiar concept to us now so I feel like it’s pretty grokkable
<hopeless pedant> “Clergy” too! See, e.g., the 1549 Book of Common Prayer [the official liturgy of the Protestant church of England]: “For they so ordred the matter, that all the whole Bible…should be read over once in the yeare, intendyng thereby, that the Cleargie, and specially suche as were Ministers of the congregacion, should…be stirred up to godlines themselfes…” or the Benefit of Clergy Act, full name “An Act to take away clergy from the offenders in rape and burglary” (1575, i.e., in Elizabeth’s reign) </hopeless pedant>
The Anglican Church isn’t officially Protestant, it’s Reformed Catholic.
I am coming out of my three-year silence to let y’all know that I got three hours of sleep last night, this was the the first thing I saw this morning, and the noise out of my mouth was UNHOLY LOUD.
(Sorry John, but not, bc i feel like you dig it when ladies make loud noises + holiness. haha. holey-ness.)
hey anybody want to have a poetry fight
donne’s sexy gdsm (the g is for God) poetry is a whole lot more erotic than Auden’s blowjob poem everybody was so into the other day, which if it were rendered in paragraph form without line breaks you would ALL be nominating for that tired old Guardian year’s worst sex writing prize and having no mercy on. but not having no mercy on it in a sexy John Donne way. no. not like that.
I’ll fight you. Donne didn’t rock with the shock of God’s cock.
TESTIFY
GDSM. *dies*
(also, I agree with this.)
I am a both/and kind of person.
All male poetry is dick poetry, to varying degrees of subtlety.
ah yes, the probable future topic of my thesis
I was SO SAD when I didn’t get to study Donne for my year 13 literature course – we did Elizabeth Bishop who is also great but that is another story (can we have texts from Elizabeth Bishop please) – that when I got to uni I drunkenly read a whole heap of his poems to my friends.
They didn’t get the sexiness! Or the metaphor! Or the religion!
HEARTBREAKING.
I second the nomination for texts from Elizabeth Bishop.
hey what’s up
oh nothing much
went fishing this afternoon
that sounds nice
yes it was
and I caught an enormous fish, really enormous
congratulations!
victory filled up the boat
and everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow
can I see the fish? did you get a picture?
well no
I let it go
Also, I would be here for texts from Bishop’s version of Robinson Crusoe, which is the only Crusoe I like, because queer and non-self-aggrandizing.
Friday, my dear Friday…
First I thought dear Lord, what kind of crazy PhD program do you have to be trapped in to be in college for THIRTEEN YEARS and then I remembered that the whole naming and numbering of grade levels is different in different countries so nevermind.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
But it won’t matter because all women are f%*$ing wh****s!
(Not the opinion of the commentator: just a summary of JD)
LOVE THAT POEM. starts out so pretty and then WHAM CURSES ON ALL WOMEN
soft spot in my heart forever for John Donne because I discovered him via Dorothy Sayers novels.
The whole groom’s gift and “Peter has always been queer about Donne” had a whole other meaning once I got older and started reading Donne.
For me it was ‘Go and catch a falling star’ in ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ by Diana Wynne Jones, which she uses as a curse…
“holy shit this is going to change poetry forever” is how I feel about this series.
A line from John Donne’s wikipedia page:
“He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel.”
I mean, sounds like a nice life, really.
#lifegoals
“pastimes” though
Favourite title of an undergrad essay on Donne, “Ode to Nakedness”
I read the title and thought, more like sexts from John Donne amirite, and it IS, and I am so happy. Thank you for this.
You know Donne would be so into dick pics.
“how’s that, dick-wise”
Okay I have to ask, are you by any chance working your way through the Norton Anthology of English Literature? Because I’m taking this British literature class where we use that and your articles almost perfectly line up with our syllabus. We read Beowulf, Dirtbag Beowulf was published. We discussed the Wife of Bath, bam Wife of Bath on the Toast. It’s kind of awesome. If I were a braver person I would send the links to my scary English professor!
Or perhaps you are The Lathe of Toastdom?
John Donne and his obsession with dicks made him my imaginary literary boyfriend in college because I was a sad loser with no social life who likes a stupid dick metaphor.
“was it clear to you that poem i wrote about [anything] was really about my dick” could apply to, oh, quite a number of male poets.
true fact: my husband won me over by reciting Donne to me when we were sorta-dating long-distance. and now we are married. license my roving hands etc.
I love Donne and I love the Toast and I’m 99% sure I’ve said this before but who cares: Mallory Ortberg is my spirit animal.
Is it ok if I mention that “spirit animal” is kind of a not-cool cultural appropriation? Most people don’t know! I’m sure you didn’t know! But it both appropriates and trivializes indigenous north american spirituality.
I’d go with “patronus”; I think that’s a perfectly fine appropriation. The wizards would be all “whatever; adopt our traditions if you want” because they know they could just put a cruciatus curse on you if they wanted to.
Between this post and the hilarious Charlotte Brontë post, I am in utter bisexual Christian Toast ecstasy.
One of my profs used to say that “John Donne writes about sex like it’s a religion, and about religion like it’s sex.”
I don’t know if she was quoting something, but it’s always stuck with me. (As the best explanation of Donne.)
People also say that about Prince.
Saw a play about John Donne in London a few years ago.
He got his dick out.
What! Tell me more about this play! Can I still get tickets? If I’m going to be a little mouse in the big city, I better at least get to see some dick-full theater.
If I were friends with John Donne I would tell him his dick imagery isn’t explicit ENOUGH just to mess with him, who wants to GoFundMe a time machine?
I was always taught that “Batter my heart, three-personed God” was a request to God to gang-rape him into chastity, and thus a really unique perspective on the Trinity.
I like singing Dowland, from around 1600, and you get all the weird sex and religion mixed up together stuff as well, plus lashings of rape culture. “If my complaints”, for example, is rather beautiful musically, but not only is it a “waaah I’m not getting laid” song, but it uses crucifixion imagery to try to talk the lady in question into shagging him. “My wounds do freshly bleed in me,” for example. Sexeh!
OMG. I studied early vocal music and the filthiness (and also creepy because ye olde misogene) is overwhelming. And what’s hilarious is that this kind of music not too long ago used to be performed so antiseptically that it was hard to untangle in my head.
Also, early music just invites bad ideas – like that creepy music video of a 4-part Dowland song performed by Sting, Sting, Sting, and Sting.
Oh, I think Sting noticed that it was about sex. Not that I’ve seen a video of him singing four parts at once, and I’m not sure I want to.
A friend of mine used to sing “Come again, sweet love doth now invite” as a pub song. With hand gestures. I would so love to have seen that. I can’t make it anywhere near through all six verses without breaking out in giggles.
Come again! sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.
Come again! that I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.
All the day the sun that lends me shine
By frowns do cause me pine
And feeds me with delay;
Her smiles, my springs that makes my joys to grow,
Her frowns the Winters of my woe.
All the night my sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams.
My heart takes no delight
To see the fruits and joys that some do find
And mark the storms are me assign’d.
Out alas, my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.
Gentle Love, draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I, that do approve
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts
Did tempt while she for triumph laughs.
He should probably see a doctor about verse two.
And if you didn’t know before now that “die” was early modern slang for orgasm, well, where have you been?
Oops, that should be “Thy wounds do freshly bleed in me.”
“if you think about it
doing it is kind of like being a saint
how do you mean
i just mean it”
That’s the only one you need, really. Everything follows from there.
yes yes yes
The only thing is that the compass foot that “grows erect” in the poem is the beloved’s/wife’s foot, not the male speaker’s (his is the one that “comes home” though). So it’s not just John Donne’s dick, it’s also his wife’s dick.
Oh, I think Sting noticed that it was about sex. Not that I've seen a video of him singing four parts at once, and I'm not sure I want to.
A friend of mine used to sing "Come again, sweet love doth now invite" as a pub song. With hand gestures. I would so love to have seen that. I can't make it anywhere near through all six verses without breaking out in giggles.
Come again! sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.
Come again! that I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.
All the day the sun that lends me shine
By frowns do cause me pine
And feeds me with delay;
Her smiles, my springs that makes my joys to grow,
Her frowns the Winters of my woe.
All the night my sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams.
My heart takes no delight
To see the fruits and joys that some do find
And mark the storms are me assign'd.
Out alas, my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.
Gentle Love, draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I, that do approve
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts
Did tempt while she for triumph laughs.
He should probably see a doctor about verse two.
And if you didn't know before now that "die" was early modern slang for orgasm, well, where have you been?
Oops, that should be "Thy wounds do freshly bleed in me."
if you think about it
doing it is kind of like being a saint
how do you mean
i just mean it
The saddest thing is that John Donne never got to have a chat with Leonard Cohen
“Hairy diadem.”
Might be on her head. Might not. It’s that ambiguity that makes fer some dern good poetry, there.
For me it was 'Go and catch a falling star' in 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Diana Wynne Jones, which she uses as a curse…
Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
I think he was pretty sure people would get it.
John Donne was a genius.