In honor of Rory, who loves this poem very much, I will give you my recording of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell.
In my Mini-Con poetry appreciation course, I told the audience that for the uninitiated, older English vocabulary and phrasing can be kind of daunting. I suggested that, when reading poems with language that might be a barrier to understanding, knowing in advance what the poem is about can help make the experience more enjoyable.
Andrew Marvell's poetry, written in the mid 1600s, is certainly old enough and different enough from modern language to give a newbie fits, as is the poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Robert Herrick, and about a million other poets that are really good. To make these pre-1800 poets accessible, I suggest googling for summaries and background. I think Marvell is actually pretty accessible as pre-1800 poets go, but I've read it so many hundreds of times that it is hard for me to judge just how accessible it might really be.
It's not cheating! You are not using these sources to lie to your high school English teacher about whether you read the poem. And you aren't cheating yourself, either. The joy of poetry (for the layman, not the obsessed devotee) is in the appreciation of its beautiful sound and its powerful meaning. If going to a summary first helps you grasp the meaning and be able to enjoy the sound (instead of worrying over your lack of understanding), do it!
Anyway, to illustrate this point, I gave my explanation of Marvell's poem first, and then I'll read it.
Basically, this poem is proof that men have always been men. Back then, in the mid 1600s, just as now, guys will use whatever means they have to get into a woman's pants. Rich ones use presents. Athletic ones use prowess. Good looking ones use their physical beauty. Smart ones use their brains. Apparently, poetic ones in the 1600s used the common literary motif of "carpe diem."
In this poem, the speaker tries to get his girlfriend to give it up by warning her that death is coming. He would woo her properly if only he could, but time is against them! They better do it right now, cause really, do you want to die a virgin?
Now, if he had just come right about and told her these things, no way was he gonna get laid. But Marvell's speaker has the talent of a 17th century metaphysical poet in his pocket, and he weilds it well. I have no doubt that he got what he wanted. I can't resist his pleas now, and it's 2010. Marvell has been dead for more than 300 years, and he is seducing me from the grave.
So, while I find the poem both hilarious (I mean really, the guy mentions worms invading her dead vagina as an inducement for sex) and compelling (He's so poetical that I would actually fall for that worm/vagina thing), I also find its carpe diem message inspiring. He's right, even if manipulative, that life is too short to pass up joy and pleasure and love and living in the moment.
And it would really suck to die a virgin.
Here's my reading of the poem:
8/17/10
