This book is, as you probably guessed from the title, a complete collection of William Blake's poetic works, edited by Alicia Ostriker (who I presume also wrote the end-notes, which are of great help in getting the best out of this most-mystical of poets).
What is there to really say? Blake was a romantic visionary so far ahead of his time that only now, nearly two centuries after his death, are we starting to catch up with the core essence of his writing. Be they the iconoclastic inclusive philosophy expressed in All Religions Are One, or the sheer depth of generosity-of-spirit and creativity with the written word as in his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (which together map out a thoroughly-interesting transition of how Blake changed as he aged between the two), or the spiky theological ruminations of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; and heck, I haven't even got to the best part - his epics. The unfinished draft of The Four Zoas, and the illuminated works Milton (which I was reading alongside this) and Jerusalem; the complete collection is worth buying just for these three oh-so-meaty texts. Herein Blake develops his own idiosyncratic-yet-coherent mythology, telling allegorical stories about Creation, the Fall, psycho-spiritual being in time, eschatology, and probably much more through the lens of his mythic figures (the "zoas") and their emanations. I wanted, in this post, to be able to summarise (or even adequately describe) these works, but I feel they are such in complexity, richness and depth that any attempt on my part to do so would detract from them. Let it merely be said that they truly warrant the label of "epic" as they put John Milton's best efforts to shame, and they are so thought-provoking in their twists, turns and sleights-of-hand (especially if you're using the end-notes to their fullest potentials) that you will come away from them changed.
At the heart of all Blake's writing is the premise that imagination is the active home of the human spirit - and therefore that liberty and creativity and all their products are somewhat holy. His writing is accessible enough, perhaps surprisingly, but his ideas are enormous; tending to be either so simple in their holistic scope that they can be grasped easily enough, or else their meanings hidden under the obfuscations and elusive complexities of his mythological system. His understanding of God and biblical living are, weirdly, deeply orthodox - and yet what he does and seeks to imply from those doctrines is utterly unlike anything any poet I've come across even thinks about, let alone attempts to systematize into written form. Dismissed in his own lifetime as "an unfortunate madman" (as a reviewer of one of his art* shows put it), Blake has nonetheless had an immense impact on the development of poetic thought and practice - he was a lodestone to the Beats, he's a major influence on Kae Tempest, and he continues to draw speculative and analytic attention from the scholarly wing of creative writing to a degree unrivalled by most poets.
I wish Blake were alive today, as his reactions to and/or against the myriad strangenesses of contemporary society would be just as left-field and potent as his responses to the problems and contradictions of his own day. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in poetry, mythology, theology, philosophy or spirituality; especially if you yourself are a poet you will find a wide wealth of inspiration from what he does and how he does it. Even if you have no interest in the fields I mentioned above, there are certainly things in here that would make you think and feel in a more open, receptive, gracious way - and surely that's one of the points of poetry?
* Yes, as well as a poet he was an accomplished visual artist. Which is maybe to be expected given that he worked most of his life as an engraver. I had the privilege last year to visit an exhibition of his work in London, and can only say that his paintings are just as weird, epic, and inspiring as his poems.
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