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Metaphysical poetry

Movement
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A 17th-century English style characterized by elaborate metaphors and philosophical wit

Detailed Definition
Metaphysical poetry is a 17th-century English tradition (Donne, Herbert, Marvell) characterized by intellectual complexity, paradoxical conceits, colloquial diction, and dramatic argumentation that fuses emotion with logic; it explores themes of love, faith, and mortality through startling analogies (compasses, fleas, tears as globes), irregular meter, and rhetorical urgency, treating the poem as a space of dialectical inquiry rather than passive reflection.
Example
Example in poetry:
Donne’s “The Flea”: “Mark but this flea, and mark in this”; Herbert’s “The Collar” wrestles with faith through conceit; Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” blends time and carpe diem; Contemporary metaphysical poetry in Jorie Graham: abstract + concrete; Metaphysical poetry uses intellectual conceits to explore emotion
Additional Notes
17th-century movement (Donne, Herbert, Marvell) using intellectual wit, paradox, extended conceits. Related: metaphysical conceit, devotional poetry. Tip: Characterized by philosophical themes, irregular meters, dramatic openings, complex metaphors.
Also Known As
Metaphysical verse Conceit poetry Donne-style verse Seventeenth-century wit philosophical verse Metaphysics Metaphysical style
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