ohn Donne (1572–1631) and Abdul Qadir Bedil (1644–1720) emerged as titanic figures within their respective cultural, linguistic and historical milieus. A close reading of their oeuvres reveals ...

Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) was an English poet and, like John Donne and George Herbert, he is considered one of the major metaphysical poets. Like these two poets, too, Crashaw was an Anglican priest ...

The Incarnation, and Passion Lord, when Thou didst Thyself undress, Laying by Thy robes of glory, To make us more, Thou wouldst be less, And becam’st a woful story. To put on clouds instead of light, ...

In Wallace Stegner’s novel Crossing to Safety a young woman named Char­ity advises her boyfriend to find something useful to do besides writing poems: “All I’m saying is that poetry isn’t direct ...

Last month I began in this space a 12-part, month-to-month series introducing poems from the Renaissance to the 21st century as a way to highlight the historic conversation that exists among poets ...

The lyrical Catholicism of the Norfolk-born Jesuit priest and poet executed in 1595 anticipated the metaphysical poets John Donne, George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. His feast day is on 21 February, ...