SOURCE: Aers, David, and Gunther Kress. “‘Darke Texts Need Notes': Versions of Self in Donne's Verse Epistles.” In Critical Essays on John Donne, edited by Arthur F. Marotti, pp. 102-22. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1994.

In the following essay, originally published in 1978, Aers and Kress examine Donne's representation of self in several verse epistles from Letters to Severall Personages. The epistles studied are “You Refine Me,” addressed to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who was his patroness after Donne secretly married and lost his professional position; “To the Countess of Salisbury”; and two poems not addressed to patrons.

Donne's verse epistles have not received much notice from the awesome critical industry centred on his work. Any explanation of this surprising fact would include reference to factors such as an assumed lack of poetic richness in these poems, the assumption that patronage poetry is too conventional to merit serious...