The Metaphysical Poets

For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsie, or my gout,
My five gray haires, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your minde with Arts improve, ...

The Canonization by John Donne.

I have a Penguin edition by Helen Gardner - The Metaphysical Poets, I bought eons ago to study Renaissance and Restoration literature. You never know when you'd be picking up such books which is why I still keep all 200 + (I think) titles on novels of many genres, poetry collections, literary criticism stuff, essays and plays, biographies, non-fiction cum history, mythology types and the occasional bestsellers in my poor old, and cheap veneered bookcase.

So there it was propped up together with standard reads in the canon of English literature and literary theory such as Blake, Paglia, Saussure, Kristeva and De Quincey, Marquez and goodness what else I got in there.

Well I was flipping through the pages and saw notes scribbled in it right... and oh man... that alone, with the dusty book smell and its yellowing pages along the borders gave me a good memory surge of how happy and appreciative I was in contextualising every lines and in return, understanding meta-poets such as Donne and Marvell.

In 2003 I had a good recommendation from a referree to do a Masters in English literature at NUS but that somehow didn't go through as I was so heavily involved with work both locally and in KL. That was a minor sacrifice, I think. Anyway if I ever were to do a postgrad, it'll be something else. It's hard to give literature relevancy to the workplace, especially when you worked in call center ahaha I'm not kidding.

My colleagues all had degrees in Business, Computer Studies, Marketing, IT, Mathematics and even life sciences, and in one corner - me, with my thoughts on Beowulf, Chaucher, Homer, Jean Rhys, Unsworth, Jung and god knows what other rubbish ahaha.

Anyway you learned to move on and garner relevant work experience and develop professionally, which is important once you joined the workforce.

This is the copy that I have. The last time I checked Penguin had come up with another Helen Gardner edition, and had I not curb my book fetish...