"unlovable"? Hardly, he's high on my list of poets I adore. I love the absolute cheek and breadth of scope of a poet that can give us the somber meditation "No

"unlovable"? Hardly, he's high on my list of poets I adore. I love the absolute cheek and breadth of scope of a poet that can give us the somber meditation "No man is an Island"/"for whom the bell tolls", the defiance of "death be not proud", the passionate longing of "batter my heart" (perhaps the most dangerous prayer i know), and also the charming, leering, nod-and-a-wink of "mark but this flea...", which is a very impish seduction poem indeed. In the persistence of his turns of phrase in our daily vernacular, he's up there with Cranmer or Shakespeare. In his range, he reminds me of Catullus, who gives us both "hail brother and farewell" and "i will skullfuck you and sodomize you". In his life, a man who by all accounts went from rake to devoted husband more or less on sight, among much else indeed. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46467/the-flea https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46467/the-flea https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-death-be-not-proud https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-de... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-ba... https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html