Katherine Rundell, _Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne_

 I APPRECIATE DONNE, but I picked this up mainly because I enjoyed Rundell's reviews and essays in the LRB, the NYRB, etc.  She carries her learning lightly, and her prose is lucid and witty. Not unlike Donne, she snaps a neat metaphor. On the deanship of St. Paul's: "it was also a fantastic piñata of a job: hit it, and perks and favours and new connections came pouring out." On the facial hair of Edward Alleyn: "a beard that looks like he cut it with a rusty ice-skate." Topping it all, on p. 254, an abecedarian prose poem indicating the range of erudition evident in his Donne's sermons.

Donne was not only one of the great poets in a golden age of English poetry, but also "star preacher of the age," not to mention courtier, diplomat, military man, lawyer...he even did a prison stint. It's hard to imagine John Ashbery producing his body of work while also being celebrated for his sermons and accompanying American troops into Baghdad, but that's the kind of career Donne had. Those were different times, as Lou Reed once sang.

To be clear: Rundell's is neither a definitive nor a critical biography; it does not aim at comprehensive detail and touches only on some highlights of the poetry.  Worthwhile? Yes. Clocking in at just under 300 pages, authoritative and crisply written, it would make a perfect starter book for anyone curious about Donne.