1. Metaphysical Poetry

2. Vitals Mostly in the 17th century Mostly in England
Breaks from Renaissance ideas about Romantic Poetry (Petrarch and Shakespeare)

3. Stats
Renaissance: Love and put the person on a pedestal (“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? /Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” Shakespeare Sonnet 18)
Metaphysical: Introspective meditation on love, death, God, and human frailty.
Usually difficult and obscure…favorite of College Board

4. What to Look for

5. Wit, irony, or paradox “Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” Astronomy and math to illustrate his deep abiding love for his wife. valediction-forbidding-mourning
“Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, 
   Men reckon what it did, and meant; 
But trepidation of the spheres, 
   Though greater far, is innocent. ”

6. Elaborate Stylistic Maneuvers
Ornamental conceits and dazzling rhymes
Herbert uses relative line length, stanza shape, rhyme, and repetition in “Easter Wings” to underscore the importance of human humility.
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store, 
     Though foolishly he lost the same, 
            Decaying more and more, 
                  Till he became 
                        Most poore: 
                        With thee 
                  O let me rise 
            As larks, harmoniously, 
      And sing this day thy victories: 
Then shall the fall further the flight in me. 

7. Huge Shifts in Scale An example: ants to a planet
Marvell’s speaker in “The Mower to the Glow-Worms” conflates glow-worms and comets. worms
“Ye country comets, that portend 
No war nor prince’s funeral, 
Shining unto no higher end 
Than to presage the grass’s fall; ”

8. Deep Philosophical Issues
The passage of time
The difficulty of ever being sure of anything
The uneasy relationship of human beings to one another and God
The fearful, obsessive, qualities of death
Can feel a bit like a cliché, but is seen as beautiful through techniques

9. John Donne https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44129/the-sun-rising

10. Thursday
George Herbert: “Love”
Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”

11. Want to go further?
poets
characteristics-examples.html