a divine image

Community Blog

Searching through the variety of blogs, I found one that sort of stuck out to me. This blog caught my eye because unlike all the rest it mainly focused on only one of William Blake’s poems. The blog is called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A Tribute to William Blake .This blog obviously targets the poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” The blog got to the core of what Romanticism was about, rebellion against established social rules and conventions. It shows you all the diverse ways people view the poem, and how they reacted to it.

The post I found most interesting was “Decoding the Voice of the Devil” by Melissa Bolinger. Although this post was very hard to follow it seems like she did actually get to a good point. She talks about distinctive “sacred codes” and their meanings. She also talks about the well known quote “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs are week enough to be restrained.” I really like this quote because it really hits a problem that’s always been around in our civilization. People only get where they want if they have a true desire to persevere.  Not only does do a good job of translating what she believes are Blake’s ideas, but she also does a good job of incorporating her own ideas and thought process.

Overall this blog is a good way to get familiarized with the Romanticism poets, especially if you’re having trouble understanding what they’re all about. It shows different ideas and points of views shared by the poets in that time. Although it only Focused on Blakes works it gives you a good out look on the rest of the poets. How they seemed to be tied to religion and sciences, but at the same time denied all the standards of their era.

reading response #3

Magnetic cure in william Blakes the french revolution is written by Robert pix. this author believes that william Blake was discussing a cure which involved "manipulating a fluid that permeates all living things but in the sick people the fluid was disrupted and the practitioner had to manipulate the flow until it was back to normal". the author of the article says that a reference to animal magnetism is Orleans strange breathing upon the assembly, the author believes that this is a metaphor for animal magnetism because some of the actions of animal magnetism are breathing on or stroking the subject.  the author also explains that Blake symbolizes Frances reawakening with the image of frozen blood re flowing which reminds of the head English magnitizer, john De mainauduc: "the stagnant blood must be pushed on the circulation." Blake writes throughout his poems and in this one about religious things but in this one the writer (Pix) says that the poem is almost entirely religious or about something that wasn't proven to work at that time, such works had to be proven somehow though. Animal magnetism based its cures on connecting religion and human, the unseen to the seen. pix says that in a marriage between heaven and hell Blake refers to the folly of churches and alludes to his own message as salutary and medicinal. this topic reflects our topic by its focus on william blake which is whom the entire blog is about but i picked this article to talk about and review because i thought that animal magnitism made blake sound more interesting to me and hopefully to you readers as well. animal magnitism is a strange concept but i think that the author(Pix) was trying to get a cross is that william blake did not like or associate himself with the churche very often and animal magnitism was a good way that was easy to believe in to distance himself further from the church.
now it is entirely possible that even though it may seem like william blake is trying to distance himself from the church that he instead was very attached to it and wanted to come up with other ways that god or other religious things made since because all the animal magnitism was was trying to deal with something that you cant see. the religious aspect of his poems though seems to be fairly high because almost all of william blakes poems have some sort of religious reference to them and it would make sense that with all the religous things in william blakes poems that he was trying to support the current popular god. on the other hand it does seem like william blake is dissing on the church not necessarily god but he was definitely puting down the church quite a bit. so maybe he was tryrng not to help out the church but to try and reconnect the human population to things unseen similar to the senses that we talked about the human race dulling or losing that connected us to nature in a better way. some of the poems make me think that when ever he thought of poems he felt sad because when ever there was god or church in the poems there was also a sadder part that kind of lurked behind the scenes. it was probalby the death of his younger brother that adds that sadness to his poems that was also one of the first times he had claimed to have talked with devils angels and demons.

The Dream (Prose Poem)

I’m standing on the shore. I see the waves coming to greet me, so I wave back. As I lay on the sand I can feel the graininess rub hard against my skin. The sun sends down a heat current and it begins to caress my face softly. When I reach for it begins to shrink in my hands, like a bouncy ball I throw it on to the ground soon it jumps back to its place. The ocean is tints of blue, from turquoise to indigo, and it begins to call my name. I run to it but as I do the world around me starts a metamorphosis. An “Oh no!” slips through my lips.

All these memories start to flash before my eyes, but then suddenly it all stops. There I am only five years old helping my grandma make her famous apple salad. I reach for her but she can’t see me. Tears stream down my face like rivers and soon I yell, but I’m not heard.

I close my eyes and count to ten, I open them and it is pitch black. Slowly a scene around me gets painted. I realized I’ve been dreaming. Grabbing hold of my bed frame I weave out of my sheets. The pain is still there. I’m an empty shell. I can’t believe a jagged little pill could cause all of this. It was the incredible ride it takes you on that hooked me. You feel nothing; no pain no sorrow, and especially not the need to be loved. I fabricated too many lies, and like a jenga tower they all eventually tumbled down.  It seems like my withdrawals have triggered my body to convulse I can sense the bed quivering beneath me like the ground does during an earthquake.

Before I know it I open my eyes and I’m standing on the shore. I see the waves coming to greet me, so I wave back.

prose poem

 Anger is a funny thing i think as i die it causes love hate and many other things. Oh no I'm being shot at i thought as i dove behind cover and got ready to shoot back while breathing hard adrenaline coursing through my veins should i run or not. but not to worry this is just a video game, just a good way to let off some steam and get angry at an inanimate object or a person far away for i feel the need to hurt something but know i need to suppress it because hurting another living thing would be bad. better to just sit on the couch and hurt imaginary people on a television screen or mash buttons on a controller because then there is no hurting because how could i hurt someone its just not right to want to do something like that no better to just sit on the couch and let the anger slowly fade away than to express it on anything living that would only create a vicious circle of pain and anger. to take out your anger on another person is just giving someone else your pain and then giving them anger to take out on someone. it is like asking someone to pay you back twofold for what you have done. So ill just sit here and play my violent video games so no one gets hurt. all of this runs through the mind  as i jump out from behind the wall and spray machine gun fire down the hallway but there is no one there. BANG! oh crap dead again and adding rage to the fire maybe this isn't a good way of coping oh well someday ill snap but for now I'm dead again.

community blog

While searching for a resource to help me better understand william blakes poetry i found this blog called william blake and his poetry. on this blog i found some interesting interpertations of william blakes poems. The background of the blog was also very fun. on this blog there is interpertations on poison tree, songs of innocence, black and white, and the human abstract. the blog goes on to explain that blake started off with art and engravings which he later transfered to poetry by engraving all of his poems. the bloggers on william blake and his poetry also found that blake had been seeing god angels and demons since age 4 which i thought was very interesting. the blog also explains some of the major infuences in his art work and poetry. some of the influences were his brother who had died. this blog says that robert(his brother) was a huge infuence on williams art and poetry they also claim that william believed to have spoken with angels and demons and also saw his brothers soul. Elizabeth Martinez one of the blogs writers claims that he did his first engraving while apprenticed to a man called James Basire who influenced his first engraving "Joseph of Arimathea amoung the Rocks of Albion". Elizabeth goes on to say that he married at the age of twenty-five to catherine boucher who is said to have helped him write the songs of innocence.
  I find it very interesting that he opened a print shop with a man called John Flaxman and that it didnt do well considering how famous his poems are now you would think that he would have done very well for himself with all the poems he wrote but poetry must be like art work its not famous or worth very much unless the artist or poet is dead. The blog william blake and his poetry had alot of interesting facts about william blakes life that i never would have known if i hadnt checked that blog. it also has much more interesting facts than displayed here but you will have to check it out to see them.

Earth's Answer

 

 

In this poem Blake is truly expressing how the human race has been exploiting and misusing Earth’s recourses. Earth is personified wonderfully; she of course is a woman. She begins to show her discontent with humans, and shares the pain she feels for being mistreated, as well as unappreciated. He lucidly describes it in the first stanza. The part where he says, “Earth raised up her head,” is almost trying to show that she is kind of ashamed to have let the abuse go on this long.

 

“Selfish father of men! Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!,” this one phrase could not be more accurate in describing exactly how people are, and the reasons why they feel the need to try to conquer everything around them. People fear the unknown, and get super worked up about things that are out of their control. They try to tame the untamable. Earth is one of those things we simply weren’t meant to conquer, although it doesn’t seem like we understand that. It was not too long ago that our ancestors walked this land and had a beautiful bond with it. They knew how fragile it is, and how horrible it would be if it was left in the wrong hands. However somewhere along the way civilization took over and greed did as well.

 

 “Brake this heavy chain, that does freeze my bones around! Selfish, vain…” Money and power was the only thing people began to care about.  Vainness played a big part in it as well. Simultaneously she wishes nothing more than for the hurting to end. To be free again is all that she asks for, so her rivers can run on their own course, and her trees can grow where the want. Towards the end of the poem it seems like even though she has been betrayed by the humans she still feels love for us and hopes we are able to realize that without her we literally cannot survive. Hopefully we still have the time needed to repair all the damaged we have inflicted upon her, and that we are still able to salvage our relationship with her.