Commonly used to designate the work of a group of 17th century poets who emplyed similar methods and moved in a spirit of revolt against the romantic conventionalism of Elizabethan love poetry and in particular the Petrarchan conceit. Metaphysical poetry is: intellectual, analytical, psychological, bold, absorbed in thoughts of death, physical love and religious devotion. Diction is simple and echoes the cadences of common speech. Form is often an argument with a lover, with God or with the self. The poetry represents an unconventional attempt to express a poet's sense of the complexities of life.

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