John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit

Donne is best known as a poet of love, never describing physical beauty in detail but brilliantly able to recreate a man's experience of love's emotions and realities, but he is much else besides. He is a poet of the spiritual journey who in his power speaks to others in travail, a great preacher who soars into word-music and encapsulates complex theology in illuminating epigrams.David Edwards ranges across all Donne's writings, including the critically neglected sermons, to produce a new and compelling portrait of this tortured and contradictory figure. As the tree's sap doth seek the root belowIn winter, in my winter now I go,Where none but thee, th'Eternal rootOf true Love, I may know.--JOHN DONNE>