[Deborah Warren]

To John, Long Dead

Death is not proud, but punctual;
It’s fairly done and functional.
Death does not deal in rest or sleep,
But takes man’s flesh and soul to keep.
Death is not callous, cruel, or vain
But kindly, modest, and humane.
Death grants complete oblivion,
Not misty heavens falsely spun.
Death’s not a transient pain, a lie,
Nor doomed itself to someday die,
For after death Death’s just begun;
Not finally finished, ended—Donne.

[Deborah Warren]

I’m going to complain about the first two lines.

The ‘but’ in line 1 is logically wrong; pride and punctuality are not contradictory. Even if ‘fairly done’ is a pun, ‘dealt’—‘meted’—another verb would be more idiomatic:

..........Death is not proud. It’s punctual.
..........It’s evenly dealt. It’s functional.

But between the opening allusion and the closing pun, the poem does what light verse should do. This rebuttal of Donne’s poem works precisely because of its light approach, where the style matches the philosophy. The last two lines snap the poem shut—as in the best poems, these are the best lines.

[Philip Quinlan]

Would another solution to L1 be "yet punctual?"

Making light of Death seems like a goodly thing to do. Pulling his sting as it were.

This, for me, is neatly executed and light without being trivial. If it hasn't found a home already, at 12 lines it is pretty compact and would certainly fit the criteria for some of the short form venues.

Top of my leader board so far.

Philip

[Roger Slater]

This is very well done. My only complaint is that the concluding pun has been donne to death, if I may make a bad pun of my own. I am certain that I have seen it in several Donne parodies over the years, though likely none of them as well written as this one. Still, since the pun here is supposed to provide the final taste in one's mouth, I could have wished it to be more refreshing.

As far as the first two lines are concerned, apart from Deborah's "but" issue, it occurs to me that the lines aren't even necessary, and perhaps leaving them out would make the ending less telegraphed.

In any event, there's nothing in the poem that proceeds to show that Death is not proud. On the contrary, Death is given a lot of reasons to be proud (kindly, modest, humane), so what do the poem's first four words really mean? It would make more sense to begin something like:

Death should be proud. It's punctual,
it's fairly done and functional.

(Though I'm not sure what "fairly done" means).

Ultimately, though what's here is crisply written and (in my opinion) beyond dispute, and there's no greater subject for light verse than death, I'm left wishing for a bit more in terms of humor. I don't necessarily mean that the individual lines should be funnier. Perhaps the same level could be maintained but the poem could go on a bit longer and lay it on thicker and provide more examples to explain the complete and permanent oblivion entailed by death.

As it stands, I think the poem hands off too much of its responsibility for being funny to Donne and doesn't go far enough to milk it from the actual subject matter that the poem and Donne have in common.

[R. Nemo Hill]

A tired pun, as Roger points out, and another shallow parody with a lazy title.
I'm not amused.

Nemo

[Maryann Corbett]

If Death is personified in L1--and it definitely is, because only a person can be proud--why has Death become "it" in L2? That's a non sequitur.

But the poet wants to unsay everything Donne has said, so I'm sure the poet wants "it." To undo Donne's personification, we need the fix Deborah recommends: "Death is not proud. It's punctual..."

I notice that responding to Donne in tetrameter, as against his pentameter, feels like an attempt to cut him down to size.

I don't see the distinction in the last two lines between capitalized Death and its uncapitalized version, so I can't make sense of those lines.

But I ought to stand aside from this one, because I disagree with it. I'll keep Donne, thanks.

[Rick Mullin]

This delivers on the promise of its first two lines. I'll say that for it. ~,:^[

[Catherine Chandler]

Rick, You beat me to it!

[Quincy Lehr]

This is the sort of poem that has made many a formalist poetry journal a slog of a read. I'll leave aside the godawful pun but note that where Donne's poem is rather profound, this one has a sneering, know-it-all tone that is, frankly, repellent.

[Roger Slater]

It's worth mentioning, I think, that even Donne himself used the donne/done pun. The repeating line in "A Hymn to God the Father" is "When Thou has done, Thou has not done, / For I have more," and the poem concludes:

But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
..Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
........ I fear no more.

By now it's a very old and tired punne.

PS--
As I poked around online, I learned there is an additional pun in "For I have more," since Donne's wife was named Anne More.