John Donne's "Resurrection"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s poem–#6 in Donne’s La Corona sonnet cycle–is an ideal consummation for many of the themes introduced in this week’s selections. Now go read the rest of his holy sonnets! Happy reading!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, September 6th, 2024. Today's poem and our last from John Dunn, at least for now, is Resurrection, the seventh sonnet in his La Corona cycle.
0:23.9	It is a kind of companion to yesterday's poem, Death Be Not Proud, as I think will become
0:31.1	obvious immediately. I'll say more after I read it. Here is La Corona Sonnet number six, resurrection.
0:42.3	Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul shall, though she now be in extreme degree,
0:49.3	too stony hard, and yet too fleshly, be freed by that drop from being starved hard or foul and life by this
0:58.5	death a bled shall control death whom thy death slew nor shall to me fear of first or last death bring
1:07.7	misery if in thy little book my name thou enroll, flesh in that long sleep is not
1:14.2	putrified, but made that there of which, and for which twas, nor can by other means be glorified.
1:22.6	May then sin sleep and deaths, soon from me pass, that waked from both, I again risen may,
1:30.0	salute the last and everlasting day.
1:38.2	We have in this poem, which is, like the other sonnets in the cycle, a comment upon an attribute to the resurrection of Jesus,
1:47.1	but then we have done identifying his own resurrection within the context of this other and
1:56.7	higher one. And here we have many of the themes from the poems we've featured earlier this
2:03.2	week of Dunn's internal conflict, of Dunn's sense of being grieved by his own sins, and, of course,
2:12.1	his preoccupation with death, and even his confidence that death can, will, or even has been overcome on his behalf.
2:23.0	But here it's richer, whereas death be not proud, is a general meditation upon death.
2:32.7	Here, Dunn is fully confident in his own participation in that victory
2:39.2	over death. There are far more first person pronouns in this poem. And where many of the Holy
2:46.8	Sonnets begin or contain prayers, petitions, or requests made by done to God. Here,
2:56.5	what could have been a request, moisten with one drop, is instead a declarative, descriptive
3:04.7	sentence, moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul shall do this and
3:10.4	that. Not a presumption, the description he offers of his soul, I think rules that out, but a
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goldberry Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goldberry Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.