Top 6 - John Donne

If there is, or needs to be, such a thing as the Greatest Poet in the English Language, Donne would be at least a candidate for the position. And so, you would think that his Top 6 poems would include some of the finest poems in the language, and I'm sure it does.

In a similar way to Bach's music, where the mathematical perfection still carries an emotional charge, Donne's intellectual line of thought and cleverness are still convincing in their engagement and 'authenticity', if the reader needs to be convinced by a balance between these two elements. But a paltry commentator like me isn't going to add anything significant to Donne studies here when he is served by some of the most impressive critical writing about any poetry.

Leishman's The Monarch of Wit and John Carey's John Donne: Life, Mind and Art are paragon examples of studies of any poet as is John Stubbs' biography and no poet suffers from the best sort of such support.

The Sun Rising and A Valediction: forbidding Mourning stroll effortlessly into any selection of great poems, one would have thought. Donne's much-vaunted rakish eroticism, whether genuine reportage or slightly more fantasist, is most memorable in his 'Newfoundland' poem, To His Mistress Going To Bed.

It is the Songs & Sonets that make his reputation for me where the precision and composition are most important and The Good Morrow and The Canonization refuse to be overlooked, leaving us- as ever- with only one more place and several candidates for it. And these little features being lazy snapshots of my unsolicited opinions, then rather than wade through lots of long poems and still go back to it anyway, I'll nominate an old favourite in The Flea because, in spite of more stately lines elsewhere in Donne, it is somehow the poem that usually defines his way of doing the job, for me.