The Flea
I was reading with some students at St. Stephen’s University and we were talking about John Donne’s The Flea.
I think that this is a hilarious poem, and it’s wonderful to sit in a room full of people as their eyes slowly quicken when they realize what Donne is writing about. It is essentially about a man and a woman in bed. That’s right, they are in a bed, and yet she won’t sleep with him. So he comes up with a metaphyisical arguement about how they are already married because they have both been bitten by the same flea.
These students take poetry so seriously, and they know enough to know that John Donne is a well renowned author/poet, up there with any of the greats. But they don’t often know just how tongue in cheek these folks often were/are.
As for pillow talk, I would have to say that it’s a bit too intellectual. How can a fellow think so clearly when he is obviously aroused. It looses some of its realism and thus…oh I’m just kidding. I love this poem, and don’t feel it needs to be picked apart to be appreciated. Sometimes the thing just needs to be read.
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