From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 5:15 AM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #119 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 119 Today's Topics: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Re: Re:Tom's reply of 25 October Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Lunar Island Introduction (mine) Blake on record? unusual? Re: Lunar Island A post-Apocalyptic Feast Re: Blake on record? unusual? Re: Lunar Island Re: A post-Apocalyptic Feast biographical support On the subject of innocence A posh-Apocalypso Fete RE: purported Blakean hostility toward women Re: A posh-Apocalypso Fete ELP CD ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 15:48:39 -0500 (EST) From: Nathan Miserocchi To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: <199610272048.PAA00538@runningman.rs.itd.umich.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just two thoughts on the subject: Thought One: Distressing "One could argue, once again, that he is only parodying the Lockean perceptions of his characters. This sounds plausible, but ***Blake shows enough vulnerability to _conventional_ antifeminism (especially in later works)*** that the _Urizen_ nerve may signal at least a partial..." from Glausser, Wayne. "Locke and Blake as Physicians" in Reading the Social Body. I have no idea where Mr. Glausser "gets off" saying this, and he doesn't feel the need to elaborate. Thought Two: Jubilant J.Gibbons new book, _Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its development in England_ (Cambridge, 1996). If you haven't read this yet and this topic interests you, I highly recommend. -nathan -- Nathan Miserocchi Gratuitous Quote: Dept of English "Reality is not that which _is_ Univ of Michigan -- Being -- but the sum, and subtraction, **** of all things extant in possibility nmiseroc@umich.edu regarding any 'real' subject or object." http://www.umich-personal.edu/~nmiseroc ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 14:29:55 -0800 (PST) From: Carolyn Austin To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Kari Weil's 1992 *Androgyny and the Denial of Difference* (University Press of Virginia) argues that androgyny frequently functions as a forgetting of the female -- that what is proportedly sexless is in fact male. She takes convincing examples from Plato to modern fashion, and although she doesn't treat Blake, it seems to me that the fact that his post-Apocalyptic figures all have male names and show no traces of the eminations would be good evidence for Weil's argument. {Incidentally, she proposes an alternative means of envisioning combinatory sexes in hermaphrodism, in which neither sex predominates over or effectively erases the other. I'd like to believe that this happens at the end of *Jerusalem*, but have yet to be able to convince myself of it.} Carolyn Austin cfaustin@uci.edu On Sun, 27 Oct 1996 TomD3456@aol.com wrote: > Avery's recent remark on Blake's post-Apocalyptic world leads me to ask, > Where does Blake describe the "post-Apocalyptic" world as all-male? Indeed, > where does he describe it? Here are some lines from Jerusalem: Los says, > "Sexes must vanish & cease/ To be when Albion arises from his dread repose" > (J 92:13). A bit earlier, Jerusalem tells Vala, "Humanity is far above/ > Sexual organization: & the Visions of the Night of Beulah/ Where Sexes wander > in dreams of bliss among the Emanations..." (J 79:73). So that would seem to > mean that there is neither male nor female after the Apocalypse (= in Eden? > =in Eternity?), but Human Forms Divine. That seems to confirm that Blake's > view of human souls is egalitarian: whether male or female, they are > essentially Human. > > Blake's illustrations, however, show both males and females, even in > presumably "post-Apocalyptic" scenes: On plate 99, Jerusalem and Albion > embrace in flames -- a male and a female. On the next plate, Los is shown > along with Enitharmon and the Spectre of Urthona (at least that's who Erdman > thinks they are) -- two males and a female. So what does that tell us? > Perhaps only that there is never an imaginable "post-Apocalyptic world," > only moments of inspiration, at least during this earthly life. > > This all brings up the question, What is the nature of Blake's mythic > characters? I'll try to float some ideas about that in a separate post. For > now, I'll just say that I think we should beware of the equation > Emanation=Female. The phrase, "Where Sexes wander in dreams of bliss among > the Emanations..." (J 79:73), suggests that the Emanations are something > different from the Sexes. And then there is "Shiloh, the Masculine Emanation > among the Flowers of Beulah" (J 49:45). > > --Tom Devine > > ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 22:16:34 -0600 From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Re:Tom's reply of 25 October Message-Id: <96102722163420@wc.stephens.edu> No need for Avery to worry about angering new historicists (of which I am not one). While it sometimes seems that Avery and I disagree about one thing or another, there is no necessary contradiction between the presentation of Russell Noyes and my comments. Noyes merely created a wider and longer historical context, suggesting that there are certain continuities in the imagery and perhaps even in the representational techniques of visionary artists. This may be easily demonstrated, of course, though it does nothing to disprove the historicity of the images, since not only Blake (who was steeped in the experience of religious and historical imagery as his own writings prove) but many visionary artists, even thoseh called "folk" or "naive" artists, have ample experience behind them to create such consistencies. An artist with a good imagination can and probably does translate the verbal imagery of prophetic or apocalyptic books or preaching into visionary paintings or other representations that will naturallypartake of the colors and shapes of the visionary words--and vice versa, by the way. To say that Blake's paintings and other visual images are consistent with traditions of visionary representation is not to remove him from his historical context nor does it obliterate his obvious deep involvement with and interest in the social and political events of his time. The point of my response to Lance was to suggest that ther3e is no necessary contradiction (as he suggested) between the satirical epigrams and other notebook poems, including the obscene and scatological verses and their related cartoonish drawings, and the creation of visionary or prophetic poems. Why must a poet be and think all one thing and only one thing? What a simplistic notion of the psychology of the artist! (While Kierkegaard may well have extolled the view that "purity of heart is to will one thing," not only did he not say "to think one thing" but he was talking about achieving sanctity and true faith, not becoming a great poet or prophet; in fact, of course, we can well imaging imagine what Blake would have thought about "to will one thing" if we think of the problems characters in his prophecies encounter when they do so). I think we need only consider the history of ecstatic or even mystical religious poetry and prophecy to recognize that the great artists in this realm do not exclude the meanest and most "human" of functions or feelings from their concerns (which is one reason, not the only one, that I rail against the denatured "spirituality" of some readings); I will offer only one example about which I know a good deal--Christopher Smart. He certainly had his problems, but he wrote sublime religious poetry, some of it in an ecstatic if not prophetic mode, since he thought of himself as a psalmist, not a prophet, and in the line of David, not Ezekiel or Jeremiah; but a glance at a collected Smart will discover a mass of humorous and light verse, some of it published in those "Grub Street" publications (and we need to distinguish betweenn the attitudes of the earlier and the middle and the later 18th century about that grubby realm--it was not seen with Popean disdain in the late age of Johnson or the early age of Romanticism), and we know that he took part (both before and possibly after his confinement) in "theatricals" of a peculiarly crude and vaudevillian character. Is this a "divided mind" or simply a case of a man who had *both* his feet on the ground (not treading the clouds with the innocent speerits), a man who lived a full and complex life of the flesh, the imagination, the mind, and the spirit. I fear that when we develop these rarefied and *single* notions of the prophetic genius, we limit and reduce the complexity and energy of Blake or any other great writer. (Witness the idiotic stuff about how Shakespeare could not have written his plays because he did not have the kind of university education inferred from his imagery--as though an intelligent and observant mind could not pick up a vast variety of stimuli from his environment--and why should Blake not envision both Los at his forge and Dr. Johnson at his stool?) To demonstrate a "community" or commonality of imagery and practice among visionary poets/artists does not imply the existence of trans-cultural or trans-historical "forces" at work on a select band of receptors (peace to the X-Files fans)--it simply frames the history with different parameters of inquiry. (For such stuff, see Andre Malraux's great _The Voices of Silence_ or, for a verydifferent approach, Jacques Maritain's _Creative INtuition in Art and Poetry_. (If you really want the X-Files version, try Jose Arguelles, _The Transformative Vision_.) My 2 cents. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 01:13:57 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Message-Id: <961028011356_133476547@emout04.mail.aol.com> Jennifer- The "Blake Ball" video sounds interesting, but I'm not familiar with it or Emily Hubley. How would one find this tape? Is it in some catalog you know, or in video stores? -Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 01:46:08 -0500 From: AGater1038@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Message-Id: <961028014607_1448803887@emout17.mail.aol.com> I looked up the Hubley tape in a video catalog at work today. It has a list price of $39.95 and its Item # in the Baker and Taylor catalogue is PYRV 9140. You would probably have to go to a video store that takes special orders to get this one. I'm trying to figure out how I could explain spending that much money on a 36 minute video. . . "but I needed it!!" doesn't seem to work anymore! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 10:08:25 -0500 (EST) From: Scott A Leonard To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Blakeans: I've been very much enjoying this thread (hey, another textile metaphor!) and will expend the chronological capital necessary to offer my own take on Oothoon's offer to "catch for [Theotormon] girls of mild silver, or of furious gold/[to] lie beside [him] on a bank & view their wanton play/In lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon." Since Oothoon is contrasting this "vision" of love--a love that delights in the "bliss" of another without jealousy or possessiveness--with Theotormon's lame inability to view Oothoon as anything other than tainted by another man's (Bromion's) touch, I (notice, Tom D, the personal pronoun!) would argue that Blake's view of unfallen love and the sexual expression of creative energy does NOT see Oothoon's offer as the equivalent of a battered woman's forced offer to pimp for Theo. That is, I don't think that Oothoon loses power or would indeed lose the power that her vision of unpossessive love confers if she "let" Theotormon, uh, "sleep around." Indeed, it seems to me that Blake's insistence that the universe has FALLEN into physical form and that gender and the "systems" that have resulted in the current gendered power struggle, goes a long way toward countering any assumption that one form is preferable, or more powerful, or more right than any other form. Sexual relations in Eternity were unpossessive & unrestricted & for the "eternal delight" of Albion. This leads me to make another comment--truly dangerous for me to start writing. I'm not sure that the question should be as simple as "Is Blake or is Blake not a misogyn?" "Does Blake "hate women"? The question is, ultimately, unanswerable since the biographical details are so scarce. Yet, I don't want to dismiss the concerns of so many contributors to our list lightly. Blake's willingness to use iconic females to represent the gentle submission to constant destruction (the sleep of Beulah) within the unfallen Albion does indeed seem consonant with traditional images of women as willing to sacrifice themselves (uncomplainingly) for the good of others. Indeed, the representation of the Madonna/Whore conception of fallen female sexuality in the major prophecies could be taken as an astute and subtle critique of the prevailing conceptualization of women, but it seems to resonate so very well with Blake's revealed vision that it's hard NOT to sense that Blake finds those representations in some sense "true." Having more or less just said that I understand both the "yes, Blake's a misogynist" and the "no, Blake's not a misogynist" and can see how people of both persuasions can base their points of view on Blake's own writings, I shall cease and return to the Ulro of grading papers. But, can we consider, along with everything else, a question related to the misogyny question: "Can an artist use his or her experience of the world as symbolic material and not assent to every 'given' in that world or in its symbolic representation?" Did Blake "become what he beheld?" Isn't it impossible to anything but a product of one's time? Or is transcendence possible? If transcendence is possible, must it be absolute--or do we only transcend in part? Someone turn this machine off--I've got to get back to work!!!!! Scott A. Leonard Youngstown State U saleonar@unix1.cc.ysu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 09:33:40 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake sighting: Emily Hubley's "Blake Ball" Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I looked up the Hubley tape in a video catalog at work today. It has a list >price of $39.95 and its Item # in the Baker and Taylor catalogue is PYRV >9140. You would probably have to go to a video store that takes special >orders to get this one. I'm trying to figure out how I could explain >spending that much money on a 36 minute video. . . "but I needed it!!" >doesn't seem to work anymore! It's listed for the same price at the website "Picture Palace": http://www.ids.net/picpal/index.html I find the price a bit steep too, so I haven't ordered it (yet). I'm fortunate in that my university library has an extensive video collection; that's how I got to see it in the first place. Those with access to such libraries might try there first. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 09:56:38 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blakelist Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks, Nathan, for that promising reference by Gibbons. I'm trying to think together about eighteenth-century rationalism and considerations of gender, especially the promotion of rationalist approaches to learning by women of prominence. I believe that the feminine mystique, in a number of forms, is important to the swift acceptance of "science." That is the context in which I have considered Blake's ambivalent presentation of women, which I am extending to eighteenth-century women writers. Suzanne Araas Vesely ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 11:14:53 -0500 (EST) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII I don't think Blake is so much a misogynist as he is a chauvinist. Witness his deliberate choice of an unlettered wife and his unsuccessful attempts to dom- inate her. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 13:23:20 -0500 From: JOHN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: BLAKE Subject: Lunar Island Message-Id: <199610281323_MC1-B75-7052@compuserve.com> I would be interested to hear comments about this one, An Island In The Moon, is for me a humourous tale with a lot of nice poetry added in for good measure. Is there a touch of social comment here, or possible parody of contempory figures? I am aware Blake has made scathing comments about his contemporys in some of his stuff. I would be cheered to understand if some of the characters actually represented real people, they certainly represent real types of people. Or am I missing the point all together? John ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 13:23:28 -0500 From: JOHN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" Subject: Introduction (mine) Message-Id: <199610281324_MC1-B75-7055@compuserve.com> I am calling from Oxford UK , hence the refference to the Tate Gallery, London is only a 1 hour bus ride from here, assuming the trafic is not too bad, and it usually is. John ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 13:23:22 -0500 From: JOHN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" Subject: Blake on record? unusual? Message-Id: <199610281323_MC1-B75-7053@compuserve.com> This is not a new phenomena! The seventies 'supergroup' Emerson Lake and Palmer went as far as to use part of Jerusalem on their live album and also an album whose name escapes me for the moment. I saw them perform this live at Wembly Stadium (London) and it was so deliciously over the top I think Blake would have approved... They didnt turn it into a dirge of a hymn as so often happens when the church organists get their hands on it! Oh and by the way you are showing your age, but then so am I! Yep, another old hippy. John ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 14:11:40 -0500 (EST) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: Lunar Island Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII John, The humor you are finding in "Island" is indeed satiric humor, and there- fore socially oriented. Quite a few articles have been written on the satire in "Island." See page 238 of Frank Jordan's _The English Romantic Poets_ for a list. Frye also says something about the satire in his _Fearful Symmetry_. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 15:28:59 -0500 (EST) From: Izak/Gloudina Bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: A post-Apocalyptic Feast Message-Id: <199610282028.PAA07599@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It is now exactly one month to Blake's birthday. Tom Devine is leading us, most appropriately, into a discussion of what Blake says about the post-Apocalyptic State. I hope discussions around this theme, and other related ones, will last most of the month. For those of us who intend, at least initially, to watch the Mental Wars from the sidelines, may I suggest a quieter sort of celebration in the next month : posting, perhaps without comment, favourite Blake descriptions of the State of INNOCENCE. Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring. The Lark sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn Appears, listens silent; then springing from the waving Cornfield, loud He leads the Choir of Day : trill, trill, trill, trill, Mounting upon the wings of light into the Great Expanse, Reecchoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell, His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine. All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe. (Milton K 520) Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 15:11:45 -0600 From: enghhh@showme.missouri.edu (Howard Hinkel) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake on record? unusual? Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This is not a new phenomena! >The seventies 'supergroup' Emerson Lake and Palmer went as far as to use >part of Jerusalem on their live album and also an album whose name escapes >me for the moment. I saw them perform this live at Wembly Stadium (London) >and it was so deliciously over the top I think Blake would have approved... >They didnt turn it into a dirge of a hymn as so often happens when the >church organists get their hands on it! >Oh and by the way you are showing your age, but then so am I! Yep, another >old hippy. > >John Is it Brain Salad Surgery, or Brain Surgery Salad--the E, L, and P album? Alas, ubi sunt? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 14:46:42 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island Message-Id: <199610282246.OAA01196@dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com> Though it is well past midnight in the UK and John and all the buildings of Oxford (or is it Cambridge?) are asleep, I pose the following question to him and/or anyone who may know: Is there any readily-available edition of *An Island in the Moon* available in the US? Apparently, Cambridge U Press put out a facsimile edition of the MS in 1987, but it seems to be out of print. Perkins and others include only the songs from IitM in anthologies, while Duncan Wu's new anthology *Romanticism* and the nearly-complete Oxford critical edn (ed.Michael Mason) have both omitted it. I don't hold out too much hope of finding a rare copy or even the CUP edition in my travels, but perhaps someone can tell me whether they know of an anthology of Romantic works in wch it is contained .. S. Reilly ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 15:13:26 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: A post-Apocalyptic Feast Message-Id: <199610282313.PAA19530@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com> I was reading The Book of Thel earlier today, and it struck me what a wonderfully curious and complex portrayal of innocence Blake shows us in the portrait of Thel fading away from wasted sexuality and youth. Whereas later Romantics (most notably Wordsworth) priviliged experience as much as Blake, their "experience" does not extend to woman: witness Margaret of "The Thorn" or "The Maid of Buttermere" or Wordsworthian descriptions of his furture wife, Mary. But for sheer simplicity, and for one of those great, memorable poetical lines, I choose the child laughing to the "piper" in the Introduction to Songs of Innocence: "Piper, pipe that song again" ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 19:30:42 -0600 From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: biographical support Message-Id: <96102819304295@wc.stephens.edu> Well, this time I am inclined to disagree with Avery for real. What support have we for the assertion tha Blake purposely chose an unlettered wife (and what other options did he have?) and what other support have we for the assertion that he unsuccessfully tried to dominate her? There are several anecdotes, of course: one that he forced her to apologize to Robert for some imagined slight; one that he taught her to read; one that he taught her to help with the printing and colouring of his works (I suppose that could be taken as exploitation unless one preferred a more benign interpretation). I am not taking a position on the misogynist/chauvinist issue--I don't believe we have enough biographical information to support the claim; as for inferences from the works, we have seen (and a good issue some years back of _Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly_ featuring Ostriker and Mellor, as I recall) that they, like scripture, can be quoted to opposing ends. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 18:25:46 -0800 From: David Rollison To: "blake@albion.com" Subject: On the subject of innocence Message-Id: <32756B2A.5E1A@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NURSE'S SONG When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still. "Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies." "No, no, let us play, for it is yet day And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly And the hills are all covered with sheep." "Well, well, go & play till the light fades away And then go home to bed." The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd And all the hills echoed. ......................... (and all the hills echoed and all the hills echoed and all the hills echoed and all the hills echoed...) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 21:32:55 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: A posh-Apocalypso Fete Message-Id: <961028213255_133841056@emout11.mail.aol.com> Piper, pipe that song again is wonderful. But more wonderful is the fragment of song in Island in da Moon: I say, you Joe, throw us the ball.... And as for Wordsworth and women. He is actually excellent when he wants to be. His subject is not his wife though. It's his sister. (Actually, his subject is always himself.) The way the lights come up on her in Tintern Abbey, is amazing and weird. Literally like a well done theatrical scene change. Wordsworth at his best is better than anything in Blake, I sadly conclude, late and soon. As for Blake being a chauvinist because he married an "unlettered" woman. Avery, what wives do you think might have been available to a chubby cockney tradesman in the 18th century? Nelson's Mistress? Byron's sister? And as for wishing for Apocalypsess', or even invoking them, be careful, you just might get one. Sad Truth: it won't be love that brings one about. Only mere blood and guts, the spilling thereof. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 96 18:48:50 UT From: "Sarah Livingston" To: blake@albion.com Subject: RE: purported Blakean hostility toward women Message-Id: Where are you getting this information? I believe it is rather rash to make unsupportable assumptions about a man and his relationship with his wife. ---------- From: Avery F. Gaskins Sent: Monday, October 28, 1996 4:14 PM To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: purported Blakean hostility toward women I don't think Blake is so much a misogynist as he is a chauvinist. Witness his deliberate choice of an unlettered wife and his unsuccessful attempts to dom- inate her. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 19:08:36 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: A posh-Apocalypso Fete Message-Id: <199610290308.TAA10246@dfw-ix6.ix.netcom.com> Phantom of Delight," in wch he exaults "her house-hold motions" and "steps of virgin-liberty," which I think are generally taken to refer to Mary, but this is not a Wordsworth page... S.Reilly ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:44:42 +0900 From: Albion Rose To: blake@albion.com Subject: ELP CD Message-Id: <3275EE27.2CB7@mb.inforyukyu.or.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Tonight. I rode my bicycle around Okinawa a bit to relax, and stopped by the used CD store in Chatan Cho. There I found an old Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Cd entitled "The Best Of,..". Normally, I would never take a second look, but cosidering the recent posts, I checked. The fourth song is called Jerusalem. Checking the credits, I noticed that the song was cowritten by Parry, and someone named Blake. Hmm.=20 1000=A5 and I took it home and listened. Sure enough, the music isn't tha= t hot, but the words are Blake. Taken from Milton, I believe. Here's a bit. And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And, by the way, since I'm writing, I am a lurker in your group. I am also a great fan of Blake. I am also a poet. Nothing but. I have, for the past 15 years, done nothing with my life but my poetry. Prior to that, I attempted a part-time poets life, and failed miserably at every turn. I have also worked at incorporating my poetry with woodblocks. I am exceptionally good at poetry, and exceptionally bad at everything else. FYI, after reading the recent post from Avery, I have decided that I will refrain from using my favorite colors of purple and red. Unfortunately, I fear that I will not be able to restrain my desire to distort familiar shapes. Peace Joshua -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #119 **************************************