To John Donne by Michael Symmons Roberts (AQA A-Level English Literature A): Revision Notes

To John Donne by Michael Symmons Roberts

Introduction

To John Donne is a 45-line contemporary poem by British poet Michael Symmons Roberts. This thought-provoking piece examines the tension between the commercial exploitation of genetic information through genome mapping and the enduring value of authentic human relationships. Roberts directly engages with the metaphysical poet John Donne's work, particularly his elegy 'To His Mistress Going to Bed', to explore how modern science has fundamentally altered our relationship with our own bodies.

The poem addresses ethical concerns about the commodification of the human body in an age where genetic information can be patented, mapped and sold. Through extended metaphor, Roberts compares this process to colonial land appropriation, suggesting that our bodies have become territories to be claimed and exploited rather than sources of intimate human connection.

Context and background

Michael Symmons Roberts

Roberts is a British poet who has achieved significant recognition in contemporary poetry, winning numerous important literary prizes throughout his career. His work often grapples with complex intersections between science, faith, ethics and human experience.

The John Donne connection

The poem's title and opening lines reference John Donne (1572-1631), one of England's most celebrated metaphysical poets. Donne's elegy 'To His Mistress Going to Bed' celebrates the female body with sensual admiration and romantic elevation. Roberts deliberately echoes and subverts Donne's language to create a stark contrast between the Renaissance poet's celebration of bodily beauty and the modern reality of genetic commodification.

The genome mapping controversy

The poem responds to advances in genetic science, particularly the mapping of the human genome. The epigraph quotes Sir John Sulston, a British biologist who expressed concerns about the patenting of genes. Sulston argued that when you patent a gene, you are enclosing a part of shared human heritage, much like enclosing common land. This ethical debate forms the foundation of Roberts' poem.

Form and structure

The poem comprises 45 lines organised into tercets (three-line stanzas). This structure creates a visual rhythm and allows Roberts to develop ideas in compact, interconnected units.

Rhyme scheme

Roberts deliberately avoids a consistent rhyme pattern, though he incorporates:

• Slant rhyme (also called half rhyme): imperfect rhymes scattered throughout that create subtle sonic connections. Examples include 'wire' and 'trespassers', or 'us' and 'lips'.
• Occasional full rhymes: lines 8, 12 and 16 share the '-ope' sound ('hope', 'slope').

Rhythm

The poem lacks an established metrical pattern, creating a conversational yet uneasy tone. This free verse approach allows Roberts to shift between lyrical description and more technical, clinical language, reinforcing the poem's central tension between romance and science.

Key themes

Commodification of the human body

The poem's central concern is how genome mapping has transformed human bodies into commercial products. Roberts suggests that when genetic information can be patented and sold, people lose ownership of their own physical selves. The woman in the poem has been 'already mapped', her genetic code 'cracked' and commodified. This transforms her from a person into data, from a lover into a 'textbook of disease'.

The speaker notes that buying and selling human genetic information has become a pursuit of 'bankers', suggesting that what should be private and sacred has become just another financial asset. This critique extends beyond science to capitalism itself.

Science versus human connection

Roberts contrasts cold scientific categorisation with warm human intimacy. The first half of the poem catalogues the clinical, dehumanising aspects of genetic mapping. However, towards the end, the tone shifts significantly. The speaker recognises that what truly matters is humanity's connection to one another and to the natural world.

The poem concludes by juxtaposing the letters representing DNA nucleotides (TTA, GAG) - symbols of scientific reduction - with the 'real heart of humanity': the capacity to love, learn from and support each other. This suggests that however much science may map and categorise us, it cannot capture or commodify genuine human connection.

Colonisation and ownership

The extended metaphor comparing women's bodies to colonised land runs throughout the poem. Just as European powers mapped, claimed and divided 'new' territories, so genetic corporations now map, patent and profit from human genetic information. The woman becomes 'your America', her body transformed from 'wilderness' into 'real estate' carved up behind 'barbed wire' and defended by 'dogs'.

This colonial imagery serves multiple purposes:

• It highlights the violence inherent in claiming ownership over what should not be owned
• It draws parallels between historical and contemporary forms of exploitation
• It emphasises how mapping and naming are acts of power and control

Loss and reclamation

The poem moves from despair to tentative hope. Initially, the speaker presents the loss of bodily autonomy as devastating and complete. However, the final stanzas suggest possibility of reclamation. The speaker urges 'you' to let your 'hands, and hers' claim back your bodies, to rediscover the 'co-ordinates of bodies' that matter - not genetic markers, but points of human connection.

Detailed analysis

Lines 1-8: the mapped body

The poem opens by directly echoing Donne's famous line. Where Donne wrote about a mistress undressing, Roberts writes: 'Now, as your mistress strips for bed, / her body is already mapped'. This immediate juxtaposition establishes the poem's central contrast. What should be an intimate, romantic moment is undermined by the knowledge that this woman's body has been reduced to data.

Her body's 'ancient names' have become a 'cracked code', suggesting that what was once sacred, private or poetic has been decoded and demystified. The metaphor continues as this 'new found land' is 'paced out, / sized up, written down as hope / or prophecy, probability or doubt'. The language deliberately evokes explorers surveying territory, measuring it for exploitation. The genetic information is processed as data about potential health outcomes ('hope', 'prophecy', 'probability', 'doubt'), stripping away humanity.

Lines 8-16: the textbook of disease

This section develops the mapping metaphor whilst bringing it firmly into the contemporary technological age. Her 'charts' (genetic information visualised as maps) are 'held on laptops, / mastered by medics, laid bare'. The phrase 'laid bare' carries disturbing connotations - whilst it continues the idea of mapping, it also suggests vulnerability and violation. Medical professionals have complete access to her most intimate biological information.

Roberts then mimics Donne's language describing the female body's 'peaks and gorges, fell slopes, / oceans, woodlands, stars'. However, he immediately undercuts any romantic elevation: 'this atlas of hers is no mystic book, / it is a textbook of disease'. The contrast is devastating. Where Donne saw wonder and beauty, modern science sees only potential pathology.

The final tercet of this section offers a brief moment of beauty and possibility: 'The sun turns dust to smoke, / and picks out, as it sets, / a path your hands might take'. However, this romantic image is immediately disrupted by the ellipsis, suggesting interruption or the unsaid knowledge that even this intimate touch cannot restore true ownership.

Lines 17-26: America and real estate

In this section, Roberts makes explicit the colonial dimension of his metaphor. The woman is addressed as 'your America' by an unnamed listener (perhaps the reader, perhaps humanity generally). The speaker confirms: 'too right'. She is indeed like America - once 'wilderness' and 'prairies', now 'carved up into real estate'.

This historical comparison is powerful. Just as Indigenous lands were mapped, claimed and divided by colonial powers who declared ownership over what was never theirs to own, so too are human bodies now being mapped and claimed through genetic patents. The violence of colonisation becomes a lens for understanding the violence of genetic commodification.

The corporation owners defend their genetic data with 'barbed wire, dogs, and other defenses', representing the 'jealous and money-hungry way' they protect their investments. These security measures, meant to keep others out, also keep the rightful owners - the people whose genes have been mapped - from accessing their own information.

The speaker notes that her 'breast's / curve has a patent', a jarring image that reduces a body part associated with intimacy, nurture and femininity to intellectual property. This commodification has become the 'hobby of bankers' who 'got tired of dealing in gold' - a sardonic observation that human genetic information has become just another asset class for the wealthy to trade.

Lines 27-35: shared names and nature

The tone begins to shift here. The speaker directly addresses the listener, questioning whether they or the woman care about this situation 'when they seek each other out'. There's an acknowledgement that perhaps people don't think about genetic commodification during intimate moments.

The speaker then introduces a crucial counterpoint: her body has a 'secret name' that is 'like yours'. This shared humanity matters more than the genetic data corporations have collected. But Roberts extends this connection beyond human relationships to the natural world. Their names resemble not just each other but the 'crab apple and silver birch' - trees filled with other life like 'collar doves' and 'green finches', which are themselves 'akin to grass'.

This web of interconnection suggests an alternative way of understanding our bodies - not as discrete properties to be owned, but as part of an interconnected ecosystem where 'all these forms of life live and die together'. This ecological perspective offers something corporations 'cannot buy and sell' - the fundamental reality of our embeddedness in nature and our connections to all living things.

Lines 36-45: reclaiming the body

The poem concludes with a shift from despair to tentative hope and a call to action. The speaker urges the listener to 'allow their hands, and hers' to 'claim back their bodies'. This reclamation is possible through rediscovering 'all the co-ordinates of bodies' - not the genetic coordinates mapped by science, but the coordinates of touch, intimacy and human connection.

The final lines present what the speaker initially calls a 'litany' - a term suggesting a tedious, repetitive list. The poem ends with strings of letters: 'TTA', 'GAG' and others. These are the letter codes representing nucleotide bases in DNA strands:

• A = Adenine
• T = Thymine
• G = Guanine
• C = Cytosine

Poetic techniques

Extended metaphor

The comparison of the human body to colonised land operates throughout the entire poem, creating a cohesive structure. This extended metaphor allows Roberts to:

• Draw parallels between historical and contemporary exploitation
• Emphasise the violence inherent in claiming ownership
• Make abstract genetic science more concrete and emotionally resonant

Parody

Roberts deliberately echoes and subverts Donne's 'To His Mistress Going to Bed'. Where Donne celebrates and elevates the female body, Roberts shows how scientific commodification has stripped away that romantic wonder. This intertextual relationship creates meaning through contrast.

Juxtaposition

The poem repeatedly places contrasting ideas side by side:

• Romance versus clinical science
• Intimacy versus commodification
• Poetic elevation versus reduction to data
• Natural connection versus corporate ownership

These juxtapositions create the poem's central tension and emotional impact.

Enjambment

Lines frequently run into each other without punctuation, creating a sense of unease and momentum. For example, 'her breast's / curve has a patent' splits a single idea across lines, emphasising the jarring nature of the statement.

Register shifts

Roberts moves between different types of language - from poetic and romantic ('peaks and gorges', 'mystic book') to technical and clinical ('textbook of disease', 'TTA', 'GAG') to commercial ('patent', 'bankers'). These shifts in register reinforce the theme of competing ways of understanding the human body.

Natural imagery

References to 'crab apple and silver birch', 'collar doves' and 'green finches' create an alternative framework for understanding human existence. This natural imagery suggests connection, ecology and cycles of life that resist commodification.

Key vocabulary and concepts

• Tercets: three-line stanzas; a structural choice that creates compact units of meaning
• Slant rhyme: imperfect rhyme that creates subtle sonic connections without full rhyme's resolution
• Genome mapping: the process of identifying and recording the location and sequence of genes in an organism's DNA
• Commodification: the process of turning something into a product that can be bought and sold
• Patent: legal ownership and exclusive rights to an invention or, controversially, a genetic sequence
• Metaphysical poetry: a style associated with Donne and his contemporaries, known for intellectual complexity, unusual comparisons and exploration of love, religion and science
• Elegy: originally a poem of serious reflection; Donne's elegies often dealt with love and desire
• Litany: a repetitive prayer or list; here used ironically to describe the DNA sequences
• Nucleotide bases: the building blocks of DNA (Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, Cytosine)

Exam tips

Making comparisons

When comparing this poem with others in the anthology:

• Consider different attitudes to science and progress
• Explore varying presentations of the body (romantic, clinical, spiritual)
• Examine how different poets use form to convey meaning
• Compare attitudes to ownership and possession in relationships
• Look at historical versus contemporary perspectives on love and intimacy

Key quotations to learn

Analytical approaches

When writing about this poem:

Remember!