Enjoyed the latest in Carol Rumens's surpassingly excellent Poem of the Week column in the Graun featuring Abraham Cowley's Platonic Love. Immediately on reading it thought of Cowley as one of the Metaphysical poets of the school of Donne, but now am not so sure realising he post-dates Donne by quite a few decades more than I originally assumed, though this poem seems to me firmly in the knotty tradition I came to admire when studying Donne for 'A' level English Lit.
Also realised that I have a tendency to tell classes that the work of Donne was a set text for me back in the days whilst the truth is we studied a whole bunch of the Metaphysical Poets (using the Penguin Grierson edition, if I remember rightly.) In some ways I preferred the more comfortable George Herbert to the cutting Jack Donne back then. Now I've got an odd feeling that the man for me might just be Henry Vaughan and sort of made up my mind to tackle my crumbling Penguin edition of Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems once I've come out the other side of the great Robert Lowell read-through (not that that will be any time soon.)
Have also realised I really must read a bit more of Cowley. It's odd how chaps who were once regarded as big name poets seem to fall by the wayside. Considering the obvious merits of Platonic Love it's not exactly fair, is it? Thank goodness for Ms Rumens's sterling efforts in keeping a whole range of otherwise most likely neglected fine writers in view.
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