The quote is from a wonderful essay around teaching poetry at high school. I have never read Herbert.

And I have never, before thought that Donne was a pimp. Perhaps he would have challenged any who said so to him.

I was less encouraged when only a couple of kids liked George Herbert. After our customary discussion failed to kindle any admiration or awe, I stayed up half the night rereading most of “The Temple” and preparing a lecture. I never lecture. The kids listened politely to my best defense of my favorite poet, the only poet whose book sits always at my bedside, the only poet whose poems I read every week. They were unimpressed. Although they tried not to hurt my feelings, they just didn’t really think Herbert was up to snuff. “Up to snuff,” as I was to discover, means “as good as John Donne.” In every end-of-year conference, the kids listed Donne as one of their favorite poets. “He’s a pimp,” according to Hilary. Sammy holds a slightly more nuanced view: “I’m like, ‘John, you’re such an asshole.’ But I mean, I love him.” When asked to write her epitaph, Alex composed a single couplet:

John Donne,
Here I come.
I like Donne as much as the next guy, but I hadn’t meant to start a cult. These responses suggest that students in the 21st century can still have an intense and dynamic relationship with poetry, even old poetry. There is real value and insight in the first impressions of readers who have no emotional stake in the subject, no axe to grind, no schooling to see past. I can’t look at Herbert without hearing Eliot’s voice in my head whispering, “Brilliant poetry. Brilliant.” When my students read Herbert, they read nothing but Herbert.

I can trace my love of many of my favorite poets to the opinions of others. This doesn’t invalidate that love, of course, but it does make me wonder what poets and poems I would gravitate toward if I had skipped my formal education. It makes me wonder if some of my favorite emperors are really wearing clothes.

But let us have some Donne. Chosen to offend the precious Gollettes from the Postmodern English Department.

Woman’s Constancy

Now thou has loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
Dispute and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

John Donne.