William Blake
A poet who also made images and pages
William Blake was a London poet, painter and engraver who lived from 1757 to 1827. Apprenticeship to an engraver and commercial illustration helped shape his working life. His own books joined writing and visual art through distinctive methods of illuminated printing. Composition involved the making of a page as well as the making of a verbal sequence.
A plain-text edition gives access to the words but cannot reproduce the whole relation among lettering, colour and image. That limitation is useful to remember without making the text inaccessible. Read the verbal work closely, while leaving room for features of the original object that this presentation does not convey.
A simple voice need not offer a simple lesson
Blake's poems reward attention to who speaks. A child's declaration, an instruction and a voice describing another person's suffering do not possess the same relation to experience. Before deciding what a poem teaches, ask what its speaker can perceive and what remains outside that speaker's account.
Contrasting perspectives can alter an apparently familiar scene. Innocence and experience are productive terms for comparison, but they need not function as labels that settle the value of every utterance. A voice may disclose a truth while also revealing the conditions that limit its understanding.
Songs and disruptive propositions
Songs of Innocence and of Experience provides a concentrated beginning. Read one poem aloud, noting the apparent ease of its rhythm, then ask whether the situation is equally easy. A memorable sound can carry an uncomfortable disparity between what is said and what the reader is able to recognise.
When poems invite comparison, keep both voices audible rather than replacing one with a final corrected version. What changes in the account of authority, care or suffering? The relation between the poems may be more revealing than a summary of either taken alone.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell offers a different kind of challenge through paradox, provocative assertion and changes of register. Read a striking proposition in its surrounding sequence. A reversal can unsettle a conventional division without becoming a straightforward rule to apply everywhere.
Read aloud, then change the listener
A useful first exercise is to identify the implied listener. Is the speaker addressing a child, a figure of authority, an intimate presence or the reader? Try imagining how a different listener would hear the same words. The change can expose a demand, reassurance or accusation concealed by the apparent simplicity of the language.
For a second reading, follow one repeated image through several poems. Avoid assigning it a fixed meaning too soon. Its force may depend on the speaker, the surrounding action and its place among other images.
If you later encounter an illuminated page, compare its visual arrangement with the experience of reading the words alone. The purpose is not to dismiss the first reading, but to notice how an additional artistic element changes emphasis, pace and the relation between a voice and its world.