Literary Criticism of a poem by William Blake

Introduction

William Blake was born in 1757. Blake was an English poet and artist. Trained as an engraver, he opened a print shop in 1784 and developed an innovative technique for engraving illustrations and text on the same plate and for producing colored engravings. Blake's paintings, engravings, and illustrated books of poetry feature detailed images of realistic natural forms as well as fanciful creatures. He lived on the edge of poverty, was considered mad, and died in neglect. When did he finally gain recognition as a visionary? William Blake has number of popular and inspirational poems to his credit. Some of the most popular poems of William Blake are as follows (Making of Canadian Culture, 2008):

A Little Boy Lost

A Little Girl Lost

Mathemaku

The Little Vagabond

The Garden of Love

And many more…..

Literary Analysis

Here, in this assignment, we would light and do the literary analysis of the some of the most inspiring and thought provoking poems of William Blake (Lancashire, 1995).

Mathemaku for William Blake

This is one of my favorites of my own poems.   Blake is not a central hero of mine, but I do like some of his poems and a lot of passages from his work, particularly the wonderful lines:

To see a world in a grain of sandand a heaven in a wild flower,Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour

In this poem the grain of sand is the dividend (that's what you divide into, for those of you who may have forgotten the terminology—and it took me a long time to remember what was what in long division when I started making long division poems).  Most of one world that might be in it is the many-color design under it.  The idea was to say that the right kind of eyesight can multiply a dreary day into a wonderful world.  Add ripples, or an influence spreading out from that world, to it, and you'll get what Blake found in a grain of sand. I thought of the “right kind of eyesight” (or, really, over-all sensitivity) as being “un-lessoned” or without much formal education and therefore able to see things in an unconventional way, like Blake did.  I liked the pun the word makes with “un-lessened,” or “not reduced.”  I added “lane-loving” because I think of lanes as wandery and out in the country, sure to go to interesting, happy places(Harold, 2008). 

Poets are usually taught no to avoid adjectives as much as possible, but I like them.  That's why I have two in my quotient (the top part) and three in my divisor (what goes into the dividend).   I do try for unusual ones, though, such as “stumbled-inert,” whose meaning I hope I don't have to spell out. According to William Blake “I tried to make my poem visually appealing, but carried out very few visual poetry tricks,   “stumbled” does stumble, and the day is kind of pinched; I think the ripples ripple, and the grain of sand is packed tight” (Hanlon, 2004).

The Garden of Love, ...