How is Donne's life and character reflected in his metaphysical poetry?

Here are some possible responses to your
question:

1. So-called “metaphysical” poetry often
   seems highly learned and intellectual. Donne was himself a highly learned and
   intellectual man. He had studied at Oxford University (although he was not permitted to
   take a degree there because in his youth he was a Catholic). He then studied law at
   London’s Inns of Court. His prose writings are highly learned, and his poetry often
   reflects a great degree of learning as
   well.


2. “Metaphysical” poetry often deals with a very wide
   range of topics, often within the same poem. Donne was learned in many different
   disciplines, including history, theology, philosophy, and the sciences, to name just a
   few. Donne’s poetry, like his later sermons and other prose writings, reflects his
   reading in all these different disciplines (and
   more).


3. Most of the other writers who have been labeled
   “metaphysical poets” – men such as George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and
   Henry Vaughan – had strong interests in the Christian religion and often wrote a good
   deal of explicitly religious poetry. Donne himself had a strong interest in religion (he
   eventually became a very prominent Anglican priest and a splendid writer and deliverer
   of sermons). Donne also wrote a good deal of what might be called “religious
   propaganda.” His poetry, especially his famous Holy Sonnets,
   reflects his intense concern with religious issues.


4. Donne
   was known in his youth for being a great “visitor of ladies,” and certainly his poetry
   reflects a strong interest in heterosexual love and in the complications of romantic
   relationships.


5. Donne became more and more overtly
   interested in religion as he grew older, and his poems reflect this greater and greater
   interest in religion as well.


6. “Metaphysical” poetry is
   often considered especially “witty” poetry (although not necessarily in the superficial
   senses of that word), and all the surviving evidence (including his letters) suggests
   that Donne was a witty man.


7. At the same time, Donne could
   often be a melancholy person (he wrote an extended treatise on suicide), and in the
   Holy Sonnets, especially, the tone of his poetry is often dark and
   bleak.


8. T. S. Eliot famously praised the “metaphysical”
   poets for being able to think deeply and feel deeply at the same time. In their poetry,
   Eliot said, there had not yet arisen what he termed the “dissociation of sensibility” –
   the idea that poets were emotional and others (such as scientists) were rational. 
   Certainly Donne seems to have been highly capable of simultaneously feeling deeply and
   thinking deeply. His poetry is as interesting for the ideas it explores as for the
   emotions it expresses.

For a biography of Donne
deliberately designed to link his life with his writings, see George A. E. Parfitt,
John Donne: A Literary Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
1989).