I had never read anything by William Blake so this was all new to me. I had to do some background reading on him because I didn't know anything about him. I found out he was also an artist and incorporated a lot of art into his poems, which was very toughtful of him.
Songs of Innocence was written in 1789 and Experience was added on in 1794. Innosence is about the transition from childhood to adulthood. Experience is a contrast to this and deals with how adulthood destroys childhood innocence. This works because the poet has actually grown older and is not just imagening it. I am not a fan of poetry but I do like to idea of of the poet looking back on his life with changed eyes.
I found some of the poems to be pretty abstract which didn't really suit me. Some individual poems are in direct contrast with others. An example of this is "The Lamb" in Innocence and "The Tyger" in Experience. The Lamb represents a meek virtue while The Tyger exhibits opposing darker forces. This is a running theme through the whole collection of poems.
I tried to find a reason to like the collection of poems but I couldn't. Nothing in it reached out and grabbed me and I'm not sure what I should learn from the poems.
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the lack of effort in this post is pretty disappointing. no one in the class has read william blake before, but everyone took the time to come up with something thoughtful to say about his work.
one doesn't have to like something to learn from it--the point of reading blake was to demonstrate that the concept of "multimedia" has been around for quite some time, and that form and content influence each other. hopefully you'll learn something during the discussion in class tomorrow.
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