The Poems (Longman Annotated English Poets) - Softcover

Blake, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0582484596 ISBN 13: 9780582484597

Publisher: Longman Higher Education, 1973

Synopsis

William Blake is one of England's most fascinating writers; he was not only a groundbreaking poet, but also a painter, engraver, radical, and mystic. Although Blake was dismissed as an eccentric by his contemporaries, his powerful and richly symbolic poetry has been a fertile source of inspiration to the many writers and artists who have followed in his footsteps. In this collection Patti Smith brings together her personal favorites of Blake's poems, including the complete Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, to give a singular picture of this unique genius, whom she calls in her moving introduction "the spiritual ancestor" of generations of poets.

About this title

Review:

"A visionary genius... There are passages of brilliance everywhere... The wonder of Blake is that he had an imagination that brought together words and images" (Independent)

"There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron" (William Wordsworth)

"The movement of his [Blake's] early verse are like the gambollings of some very powerful animal, still in its fluffy-footed and tottering babyhood" (Samuel Butler Yeats)

"[Blake] always insists on the importance of the pure, clean line that evokes and creates the figure on the background of the uncreated void" (James Joyce)

"Blake is a great liberating imaginative force" (Tom Paulin)

Book Description:

'Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled' William Blake

About this edition

• Publisher: Longman Higher Education
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0582484596
• ISBN 13: 9780582484597
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 902
• Editor: Stevenson W. H.