With Valentine's Day looming, he came up with a list of the top ten love poems for the Guardian.One title on the list:
"The Flea" by John DonneRead about the other poems on the list.
If there are a number of great conceits in the Marvell, then there is a single one in this, at first sight tasteless masterpiece. Almost, one feels, as an exercise in virtuosity, Donne turns a human flea into a persuasive romantic symbol. Said flea has just bitten both himself and the object of his attentions and so becomes an improbable erotic crucible: Donne argues disingenuously that, as the two of them are now conjoined in the flea, they might just as well get on with the grosser physical details.
--Marshal Zeringue
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