William Blake
Engraver, painter and poet who created a personal mythology of angels, devils and eternal children.
Biography
Blake was a Londoner who trained as an engraver and spent his life producing books that he both wrote and illustrated. His illuminated books — Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — are works of total art, text and image inseparable.
He was largely unrecognised in his lifetime, dismissed as a crank. A century after his death, the Pre-Raphaelites and then the Romantics rediscovered him, and he is now regarded as one of the most important figures in British art and literature.
Writing Style
- Simple four-beat lines that often carry complex metaphysical arguments.
- The contrariety of states: innocence and experience are not stages but permanent possibilities of perception.
- Personal symbols — Urizen, Los, Orc — built into a mythology he shared with no one.
- Visual thinking: many of his poems are essentially captions for images he was simultaneously conceiving.
Influence & Legacy
The godfather of visual poetry and of the artist as self-creator. Every poet who combines text and image, or who creates a private mythology, is working in his shadow.
Famous Poems
Other England Poets
About This Entry
This is a brief, opinionated introduction to William Blake — not a comprehensive biography. For detailed scholarship, consult the volumes listed in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography or the relevant collections of letters and criticism. The goal here is to give you enough context to read the poems with fresh eyes.