Blake's Poetry
Jun. 20th, 2023 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo William Blake was a modernist poet.
No, not really.
But his work has more in common with what poets like Eliot, Pound and Mirlees were doing c. 1920 than with anything his contemporaries were up to.
It is also completely free of the inflated but utterly conventional poetic language that makes most 18th century verse so tiresome and the self-consciously grandiose language that makes all but the best romantic poetry feel strained.
He calls a spade a spade and a globule of blood a globule of blood and an emanation an emanation.
Yes, he's difficult. But that's because he's operating in a quantum universe the scientists hadn't discovered yet and which he's having to invent a terminology for.
I'm reading Milton. That's not Milton himself, but Blake's prophetic book called Milton. Much of it is beyond me, but it's bloody good. I thought I'd struggle but nothing of the sort. It's a page-turner.
Ackroyd recommends reading it aloud. That's good advice.
Blake is on record as having sung his verse. None of his tunes have survived but Ackroyd suggests he was working within the vein of the popular music of his day and probably sounded like a street balladeer.
So not only a modernist but a singer-songwriter.
No, not really.
But his work has more in common with what poets like Eliot, Pound and Mirlees were doing c. 1920 than with anything his contemporaries were up to.
It is also completely free of the inflated but utterly conventional poetic language that makes most 18th century verse so tiresome and the self-consciously grandiose language that makes all but the best romantic poetry feel strained.
He calls a spade a spade and a globule of blood a globule of blood and an emanation an emanation.
Yes, he's difficult. But that's because he's operating in a quantum universe the scientists hadn't discovered yet and which he's having to invent a terminology for.
I'm reading Milton. That's not Milton himself, but Blake's prophetic book called Milton. Much of it is beyond me, but it's bloody good. I thought I'd struggle but nothing of the sort. It's a page-turner.
Ackroyd recommends reading it aloud. That's good advice.
Blake is on record as having sung his verse. None of his tunes have survived but Ackroyd suggests he was working within the vein of the popular music of his day and probably sounded like a street balladeer.
So not only a modernist but a singer-songwriter.
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Date: 2023-06-20 11:58 am (UTC)Think of GM Hopkins or Dylan Thomas!
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Date: 2023-06-20 12:15 pm (UTC)