William Blake

[hay82]

I have thought about giving poetry a try.
I have seen this William Blake: The Complete Poems (Penguin English Poets) and was thinking about getting it.
I would like to know if anyone has read this version and if there is a better collection of his poems that you might recommend instead.
As a final question I would like to know if I have a chance of understanding his poetry without having read poetry before.

Hay

 

[Wabbit]

I can't answer any of those apart fromt the last one but it's the most important

YES! you can understand poetry without knowing anything about it! It's like music. You can appreciate music without knowing how to play or any of the technical details. It's just beautiful or not or you like it or you don't and the same with poetry

Good luck, I hope you enjoy it! If not, don't be put off and try some others!

I would suggest you buy an anthology of poetry This would give you a wide range of poetry styles and give you a better idea about poetry and also there will be more chance you find something you like. I mean, you might buy the Blake book and just hate him! I say, buy an anthology and then if you find you like certain poets you can investigate those in more detail and buy a book devoted to them!

I suggest to you Poetry Please! It has 100 poems in it as voted for by the listeners of a major London poetry radio show

 

[ControlArmsNow]

As you're reading Blake for the first time I'd suggest you try his shorter poems, such as The Sick Rose or The Tyger to begin with. Many of Blake's more epic poems and "prophetic books" contain symbolism that is practically incomprehensible without years of study. His shorter works, however, are easily accessible to all.

There is plenty of poetry available on the 'net, so you could sample some before committing your hard-earned cash. Try here, for a start -http://www.love-poems.me.uk/biography_blake_william.htm

I also have an excellent audio book (Poems of William Blake - isbn: 0140865721) which is a good way to get into his poetry.

(Ps. In case you doubt Blake's accessibility, you're talking about the man who wrote this couplet: "If Blake could do this when he rose up from shite, What might he not do if he sat down to write." Enjoy)

 

[hay82]

I suggest to you Poetry Please! It has 100 poems in it as voted for by the listeners of a major London poetry radio show

Thanks, I think I'll get that one just to get me started.

Try here, for a start -http://www.love-poems.me.uk/biography_blake_william.htm

Nice link.. there seems to be a lot of poems there. I'll have to give it a try when I get time to read again..

 

[Crystal]

I have thought about giving poetry a try.
I have seen this William Blake: The Complete Poems (Penguin English Poets) and was thinking about getting it.
I would like to know if anyone has read this version and if there is a better collection of his poems that you might recommend instead.
As a final question I would like to know if I have a chance of understanding his poetry without having read poetry before.

Hay

jeezus, i misunderstood you. had thought you wanted to write poems.

yes, of course, you can understand william blake's poetry as long as you have a heart for being romantic.

Goodluck

 

[hay82]

jeezus, i misunderstood you. had thought you wanted to write poems.

yes, of course, you can understand william blake's poetry as long as you have a heart for being romantic.

No I have no intention of writing poetry, I'll leave that to those who can. And I probably have a heart for being romantic

My favorite poem by William Blake, from the webpage I got by ControlArmsNow, is London.

 

[Crystal]

In fact, Robert Burns' poems seem to be more romantic, IMO.

and here is another thread, you might want to have a look: favorite poets


Here is my favorite poem by Rober Burns that i mentioned in that thread:


My Heart's In the Highlands

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer -
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forrests and wild-hanging woods;
Farwell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, whereever I go.


Note: Read out poems loud! It feels different! & try to hold the picture/imagination!

Hope i did not distract your topic too far.

 

[hay82]

here is another thread, you might want to have a look: favorite poets

The list of things to read just keep geting longer.. Does it ever stop? I hope not.
I found this in the thread:

A stanza from Rumi:
Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.
Imagine, a suspended ocean, riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
All souls have drowned in it, and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope, and the rest is fear.

And that I really like.

Note: Read out poems loud! It feels different! & try to hold the picture/imagination!

Tried it and it does feel different and got my roommate to look at me like I had gone insane, which I probably have. But still it does work.

Not really sure about the "My heart's in the Highlands" poem though. Didn't really make me feel much, except for the for the first and last four lines. But people have different tastes.

 

[Crystal]

A stanza from Rumi:
Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.
Imagine, a suspended ocean, riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
All souls have drowned in it, and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope, and the rest is fear.

And that I really like.

About Rumi, i once found a good website about him, but did not have much time to show you right now. get back later.

Tried it and it does feel different and got my roommate to look at me like I had gone insane, which I probably have. But still it does work

hehe. you are really funny. my pleasure to know that episode about Robert Burns' poetry.

Not really sure about the "My heart's in the Highlands" poem though. Didn't really make me feel much, except for the for the first and last four lines. But people have different tastes.

I learned Rober Burns in my English literature class, during which i really liked it. yes, as i read it again today, I hardly felt the charming as it was years ago.

Have a good day,

 

[hay82]

I learned Rober Burns in my English literature class, during which i really liked it.

I always felt that reading poetry in class was annoying. You had to sit there analysing every line. I don't see poetry as something to analyse but more like something to make you fell and see something. So when a teacher tries to force his interpretation on you, it takes the fun out of it. What do I care what all the "smart" people see in the poem? I care for what I see in it.

And a great day to you.

 

[Wabbit]

Yes, I so completly agree with what you say.

Somebody was once telling me about how they studied The Raven and how it was meaning this or that! How can anybody really know what it was intented to mean? And as you say, does it really matter? Poetry lives in the heart and not in the mind.

 

[Scratchy]

I don't know, I never really developed a taste for poets from the Romantic period. I've always preferred Pope, or Donne or Marvell. Like this one:

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~ Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

"... yet we will make him run." *Sigh* I have yet to be wooed like that... Sorry, I just realised how much space I took up. If this bugs anyone, let me know and I'll edit it.

 

[ControlArmsNow]

I don't know, I never really developed a taste for poets from the Romantic period.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Did somebody say "Deserts"? You made me think of this - one my absolute favourites, unfortunately from that Romantic period you don't have a taste for, but anyway . . .


I MET a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

[Maya]

Yes, I so completly agree with what you say.

Somebody was once telling me about how they studied The Raven and how it was meaning this or that! How can anybody really know what it was intented to mean? And as you say, does it really matter? Poetry lives in the heart and not in the mind.

Every answer given to my english teacher about any poem, used to be wrong, since it wasn't in accordance to what she meant was the correct answer. Like she had written them all!! BLAH!
I liked the teachers who used to say that every answer on what a poetry really was about was correct, as long as you gave a reason for why you thought so.

 

[novella]

I think it's interesting to discuss poetry in a class. Sometimes a poem can be open to many interpretations, and other times the teacher can actually bring something to the experience, by helping students to understand the references and read accurately. Lots of people do not read accurately on their own.

There's a new book out called Why Read? that's about how literature is the seat of moral and ethical learning, that readers learn about character through reading about the human condition, and that the central truths in great literature are the essence of civilization.

I like this poem. I think it's about history and mortality and human troubles, but others probably find something else there:

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble..."
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

 

[Wabbit]

Did somebody say "Deserts"? You made me think of this - one my absolute favourites, unfortunately from that Romantic period you don't have a taste for, but anyway . . .


I MET a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley

AHHHH! Percy. Bysshe. Shelley! NOW we are talking Love Shelley, he is one of my absolute faves. I do tend to like the romantic era too, although I do like contemporary stuff also!

 

[hay82]

I think it's interesting to discuss poetry in a class. Sometimes a poem can be open to many interpretations, and other times the teacher can actually bring something to the experience, by helping students to understand the references and read accurately.

Sadly I have never had such a teacher. To me it seemed that their interpretation was the only valid one, and they always tried to make me see it their way. I didn't always though, which might explain my poor grades.

Lots of people do not read accurately on their own.

How do you read accurately? That it should be possible to read something inaccurate just seems strange to me.

 

[Crystal]

Hay,

about the website of Rumi that I mentioned, ermm, I could not find it inmy favorite folder. Sorry about that.

noticed that you finished the slaughter house five. what do you think? anyway. Enjoy your new reading, War and Peace.

the avatar will come back.

 

[hay82]

about the website of Rumi that I mentioned, ermm, I could not find it inmy favorite folder. Sorry about that.

Thats alright, thanks for looking though. appreciate it.

noticed that you finished the slaughter house five. what do you think? anyway. Enjoy your new reading, War and Peace.

I really loved it, its different and you have to think to understand it.

the avatar will come back.

I finally saw Amelie yesterday, I had been putting it off because its french. Glad I did see it, its the most amazing movie I have ever seen. But anyway, I couldn't help thinking that Amelie looked familiar, just realised why .

 

[novella]

How do you read accurately? That it should be possible to read something inaccurate just seems strange to me.

Well, for instance, if a person ignorant of the American Civil War were to read Melville's poem "Shiloh: A Requiem" they would have no idea what the poem is about. Though it is clearlyl written in modern English, it is very oblique in its references to that horrific battle. In that case, some context, instruction, or footnotes would help the reader to read the poem accurately.

This type of problem is manifold in reading something like Chaucer, in which the language is archaic, the pronunciation is a whole world of study, and the humor is often in the form of puns and social satire that require a pretty good grasp of the language and the historical context. That's why Chaucer, published in its original language, often has extensive footnotes.

It's possible to misread almost anything. Langston Hughes' poetry, e.g., A Dream Deferred, hinges on having some insight into the black American context, jazz references, and slang. And that's pretty modern writing.