Super-infinite The transformations of John Donne

Scholar Rundell (The Wolf Wilder) explores in this thoughtful biography the life and art of poet and priest John Donne (1572--1631), positioning him as an imaginative, witty, and sensual figure. Donne "reimagined and reinvented himself, over and over: he was a poet, lover, essayist, lawyer, pirate, recusant, preacher, satirist, politician, courtier, chaplain to the King, dean of the finest cathedral in London," Rundell writes as she traces Donne's life from his birth into a Catholic family during the strife of the Protestant Reformation through his formal education, appointment as a member of Parliament, marriage to Anne More (which got him thrown into Fleet Prison; More was a minor and her family didn't approve the marriage), and his eventual renunciation of Catholicism for Anglican priesthood. Donne was keenly aware of sorrow, Rundell shows, and believed "we, humans, are at once a catastrophe and a miracle." But he was also a biting satirist who mocked social expectations through his writing, and a romantic. ("The word most used across his poetry, apart from 'and' and 'the'," Rundell notes, "is 'love.' ") Rundell's prose is stylish and playful, referring, for instance, to Donne's religious treatise Pseudo-Martyr as "so dense it would be swifter to eat it than to read it." This comprehensive study is poetic in its own right; scholars, students, and poetry lovers, take note. (Sept.)

An enthusiastic biography of the metaphysical poet, scholar, and cleric. Prizewinning children's-book author Rundell, a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, delivers a fresh, delightful biography of John Donne (1572-1631). A staunch admirer--she places the "finest love poet in the English language" alongside Shakespeare--her book is an "act of evangelism." Donne "was incapable of being just one thing," writes the author. "He reimagined and reinvented himself, over and over." She nimbly captures Donne in all his guises as well as the historical period in which he lived. A "lifelong strainer after words and ideas," a youthful Donne kept a commonplace book at Oxford--now lost; Rundell suggests its technique of literary alchemy influenced his method of writing. At London's Inns of Court, he mostly studied frivolity and wrote some "bold and ornery and intricate" poetry that "sounded like nobody else." As Rundell reports, The Oxford English Dictionary records some 340 words he invented. Donne dressed fashionably and wore "his wit like a knife in his shoe." In 1596, bereft after his brother's death, Donne was "keen to get away" and tried his hand at privateering. Working for a wealthy friend, he wrote numerous rakish, erotic verse with stylistic "tussles and shifts," often untitled, which he shared with others rather than publish. Alongside poems that "glorify and sing the female body and heart," Rundell writes, "are those that very potently don't." It should come as no surprise, she notes, that someone who lived through a plague, watched many of his 12 children die young, and had suicidal thoughts wrote some of literature's greatest poems about death. Long dependent on patronage to cover debts, "slowly, in both doubt and hope, Donne's eyes turned towards the Church," and he was ordained. King James appointed the "star preacher of the age," famous for his metaphor-laden sermons, Dean of St. Paul's in 1621. Written with verve and panache, this sparkling biography is enjoyable from start to finish. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.