Resolvable Paradoxes in Donne's poetry

John Donne’s poetry is most remembered for his metaphysical conceits. He brilliantly develops long drawn out metaphors using comparisons that are far from the norms of his time. Another of Donne’s fancies as a writer is to create amusement through puns. Donne’s passion for playing with language is seen not only in his elaborate conceits and witty puns, but also in his paradoxes. While conceits might be Donne’s most famous and often used poetic device, he also excels at creating paradoxes and then resolving them. Like his conceits, Donne’s paradoxes require close reading and an analytical mind as they force the reader to try to understand how things that cannot be, are. Donne’s use of paradoxes extends throughout his subjects. In his poems “The Canonization” and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, Donne implements paradoxes within love poems, while in his “Holy Sonnet 10” and “Holy Sonnet 14”, he employs paradoxes within religious poems. Donne is a m...