Blake List — Volume 1997 : Issue 40

Today's Topics:
	 Sixty Wintry Worms
	 a source for an image in Night Thoughts
	 Re: Quote
	 Adult Manipulation in Blake
	 Re: Sixty Wintry Worms
	 A Villanelle for Charlie K.
	 Villanelles
	 Some villanelle's for Gloudina
	 Jim Morrison/Hendrix
	 re: villanelles
	 In Mourning
	 re: villanelles
	 re: Jim Morrison/Hendrix
	 Re: Dictionary
	 new member inquiry
	 Re: In Mourning
	 Quote
	 Re: In Memoriam: Allen Ginsberg

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 17:39:45 -0500
From: John Hecklinger 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Sixty Wintry Worms
Message-Id: <334582A4.77C2@earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Jennifer Michael wrote:

"This calls to mind the "Worm of Sixty Winters," a phrase (I can't
remember
the location at the moment) in which Blake sums up the fallen perception
or
definition of humanity, in which both the senses and the life are
shrunken.
That would suggest that the rose is humanity in its living complexity
and
beauty."


I found the worms in "Europe a Prophesy."

"Then Enitharmon down descended into his red light,
And thus her voice rose to her children, the distant heavens
     reply.

PLATE 5
Now comes the night of Enitharmons joy!                          
Who shall I call? Who shall I send?
That Woman, lovely Woman! may have dominion?
Arise O Rintrah thee I call! & Palamabron thee!
Go! tell the human race that Womans love is Sin!                 
That an Eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters
In an allegorical abode where existence hath never come:
Forbid all joy, & from her childhood shall the little female
Spread nets in every secret path.

My weary eyelids draw towards the evening, my bliss is yet but
     new. "   

One possible reading:
Enitharmon sends Rintrah and Palamabron to convince humanity that
"woman's love is sin."  Enitharmon intends this belief to allow "Woman"
to have "dominion."  The "worms of sixty winters" have forsaken sensual
enjoyment and their reward will be allegorical non-existence.  Now, who
is the "little female"?  The nets she spreads catch those on secret
paths, the non-believers who travel the crooked roads of genious and the
perilous paths of visionary subversion.  Am I making sense?

------------------------------

Date: 04 Apr 97 21:09:59 EST
From: vultee <76507.222@CompuServe.COM>
To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" 
Subject: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Message-Id: <970405020958_76507.222_FHU46-1@CompuServe.COM>

The de Loutherbourg appears in Morton D. Paley's _The Apocalyptic Sublime_ (New
Haven: Yale UP, 1986), which also has a very good chapter on Blake.

The text of the _Night Thoughts_ page you described (12) reads, IN PART:

"Think not that fear is sacred to the storm;
Stand on thy guard against the smiles of fate.
Is heaven tremendous in its frowns?  most sure--
And in its favours formidable too:
* Its favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us, full as much as woes;
Awake us to their cause and consequence;
And make us tremble, weigh'd with our desert.
Awe nature's tumults, and chastise her joys,
Lest, while we clasp, we kill them; nay, invert
To worse than simple misery their charms:
Revolted joys, like foes in civil war,
Like bosom friendships to resentment sour'd,
With rage envenom'd rise against our peace.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire:
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death."

Blake had used the image of the mother restraining a child who is attempting to
chase a bird years earlier in _There is No Natural Religion_ (a).  The
accompanying text reads: "Man by his reasoning power. can only compare & judge
of what he has already perciev'd."


Denise Vultee

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:10:38 -0700
From: "Charlie K." 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id: <199704050407.VAA06153@gost1.indirect.com>

Jack ran this by us:

> I'm trying to develop this idea that sense expansion takes place
> as an apocalypse and that this apocalypse, on perhaps an individual
> level, takes place when one perceptually "self-annihilates" their
> "selfhood," meaning not only that one ceases to act selfishly (at
> least temporarily) but in a more literal sense one sets aside the
> idea of his/her own identity as it is presented to him/her by
> his/her closed senses, the standard five senses that take in
> phenomenal "reality." 

I think sense of identity is a big part of it.  It's a strange thing
because we are our egos, we can't get past that in every day life,
it's is a necessary and beautiful thing Self.  Do know that as long
as things are the way they are, your Self is a good friend to have.
It allows us to get along biologically in This World.  But what I
think the majority doesn't truly realize at this point, or at least
doesn't exercise, is that there is much great Wisdom & Power in
seeing All for what it is, and not being concerned with Self as much,
or selfish desires.  One gets to the point where one can feel how
another is feeling just by being close to them and perceiving them
with as much sense as possible... sight, touch, small, etc.  You have
to learn to read expressions and patterns.  All of Nature is an
expression of some sort.  The clouds.  Comets.  Etc.

I believe perception of the world is changed when one is simply aware
that their ego or sense of self is just a part and not All. When one
knows of the greater totality.  Things will present themselves to
someone who carries with them this concept and exercises it.  It's
hard to describe.  How much do you care about yourself in your
perceptions, and how much do you care about the others around?  And
how much do you see how it all relates to everything going on?  The
State of Innocence cannot be Unorganized because it takes active work
to maintain the reduced self Vision of everything.  Not that I've
perfected it or anything (I get weary about sounding so sure all the
time, but I refuse to let doubt [which is the Spectre] ruin my
thoughts and writing).  I can only speak from my Experience.  I
believe a highly cultivated sense of Self is the fallen state.  To be
only concerned with one's own affairs.  There's too much of it in
This World.  And Culture & Money sure don't help the situation.  For
instance, I've found that whatever perception I maintain, girls never
seem interested in me.  I'm 24 & definitely interested in girls. They
will befriend me, but they never take a romantic interest.  This is
frustrating sometimes, but at least folks like Blake were bold enough
to set down the Truth in words so that people like myself have some
reassurance. I've had timeless, selfless moments on mountaintops
where all of Creation Dances (clouds) & Speaks (wind) to me and Knows
I am "tuned in."  Not a lot of bullshit comes out of my mouth and I
tend to be quiet around People I'm not acquainted with.  I'm not good
at being social because I cannot be fake.  I get along with everyone
I meet.  People never "hate" me and rarely get angry with me, but
sometimes I think I annoy people by constantly spouting out my
home-spun Wisdom, I can't help it. I'm always correcting little
things People say.  Sometimes I think People just Talk to hear
themselves speak without regard to what the Words they are Uttering
really make. Language is reality to an extent.  I hate it when people
treat me with too much respect. I'm just like everyone else, I just
have less bull (well at least from my point of view, this whole post
could be bull to some of you) coming out my mouth, which makes one
odd, especially in this American culture. Corruption is the
self-concerned fakeness. People spend so much time acting out a
Persona they know and trust to get along in This World, that they can
lose sight of their True Self.  All Human True Selfs are pure and
Holy and good. The garbage only comes later. Ol' Will disconnected
himself from his society so he could better maintain his True Self
and its Divine Vision.  This ain't easy.  It is easy to just be like
everyone else. So Unorganized Innocence is an Impossibility (when one
is past childhood).  The Man who respects woman shall be despised by
woman (true in my experience). Everything that lives is Holy
(indeed). Improvement of sensual enjoyment is Blake's way of saying
that once we all get back to our True Selfs (and this ain't gonna be
a pretty episode, or at least so the Prophets tell us), we will all
see the Tree the Wise Man sees and not the one a Fool sees. We wont be
so caught up in sex and reproduction because we will know that a hug
(from anybody) accomplishes much of what we all really want & need in
This World. And I think Blake saw a major problem rooted in the
separation of People into small Family units, into their own houses,
disconnected & separate from others. Gettin' back to the Garden is an
acceptance of the fact that the only real Family we belong to is the
Human family, the Living Family... Human being the pinnacle of
Nature's evolution since our Essence fell upon this warm'd watry blue
planet. All Life Forms working toward becoming Human (or is it Alien?)
again, held down because so much of current Humanity does not
Understand.  Didn't they clone a monkey recently? Could continuation
someday no longer depend on sexual regeneration? What affect might
this have upon Time & Space?

When we all Know and are all tuned in (however realistic or
unrealistic this may sound), people will be able to heal one another
because they will feel all the pain and joy of other People, once
everyone is no longer confined in their prison egos & realize the
Divine Connectedness of the whole blasted thing.  There will be no
secrets and no lies.  We will live in the Imagination.  We will float
among the Stars.  This will not happen as long as Money and
Hierarchies and Laws exist!  Jesus accomplished this Vision.  It is
not something out of reach to any of us.  My studies of shamanism &
entheogenic plants & drugs have added to these thoughts greatly.  I
feel I belong to the religion of Blake.

So anyway, enough philosophy & fancy for one evening.

Just some of my Thoughts.

Good Night,

Charlie 

"but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was
then perswaded. & remain confirm'd . . . . I cared not for
consequences but wrote." 

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 10:20:41 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Adult Manipulation in Blake
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Denise Vultee writes:

>Blake had used the image of the mother restraining a child who is attempting to
>chase a bird years earlier in _There is No Natural Religion_ (a).  The
>accompanying text reads: "Man by his reasoning power. can only compare & judge
>of what he has already perciev'd."

He also visually used it, more subtly, in the way the children are led
around on "Holy Thursday", guided in the second plate of "The Ecchoing
Green", and the woman holding back the child in "Spring" in _Songs of
Innocence_.

In the more obviously fallen world of _Songs of Experience_, "The Chimney
Sweeper" has one foot that connects to the sidewalk like a ball and chain,
the woman hovers over the child in "Nurse's Song", a child is held up by
another woman in "The Fly", the woman seems to be pushing away from "The
Angel".

I would suggest that some of Blake's *inspiration* (I've been reading
William James lately, and one subchapter in _Psychology_ is called "Old
Fogyism and Genius", in which he seems to lean against there being such a
thing as *pure* genius or "inspiration) actually comes from one of the
dreaded reasoning powers of his time: Rousseau. Although to me, Rousseau
makes an interesting, at times dangerous, bridge between Enlightenment and
Romanticism. But in works such as _Emile_, Rousseau warns about the
corruption that adults do to kids without even knowing it. I actually see
Blake as taking this in a more cynical way than Rousseau had intended it,
however. How we can ever be free of our pre-conceptions of "good" and
"evil"... when to break a law... when love or "energy" can override... but
then gets corrupted or burnt out, as in "The Good and Evil Angels" visually
depicted devolution: these are dilemmas that Blake at his best depicted
quite well.

-Randall Albright

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 10:47:01 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Sixty Wintry Worms
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>PLATE 5
>Now comes the night of Enitharmons joy!
>Who shall I call? Who shall I send?
>That Woman, lovely Woman! may have dominion?
>Arise O Rintrah thee I call! & Palamabron thee!
>Go! tell the human race that Womans love is Sin!
>That an Eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters
>In an allegorical abode where existence hath never come:
>Forbid all joy, & from her childhood shall the little female
>Spread nets in every secret path.
>
>My weary eyelids draw towards the evening, my bliss is yet but
>     new. "
>
>One possible reading:
>Enitharmon sends Rintrah and Palamabron to convince humanity that
>"woman's love is sin."  Enitharmon intends this belief to allow "Woman"
>to have "dominion."  The "worms of sixty winters" have forsaken sensual
>enjoyment and their reward will be allegorical non-existence.  Now, who
>is the "little female"?  The nets she spreads catch those on secret
>paths, the non-believers who travel the crooked roads of genious and the
>perilous paths of visionary subversion.  Am I making sense?

I'm with you on the "worms of sixty winters."  It reminds me of the Puritan
rhetoric (a la Jonathan Edwards and the spider) that reduces the human body
*and* spirit into the lowest possible level in order to "prove" man's
unworthiness and insignificance in the face of God's power:  about as far
as you can get from the human form divine.  I wouldn't rule out your
reading of the "secret paths," but I read those lines also in the context
of sexual repression.  Woman's "dominion" (according to Blake, as I read
it) depends on the condemnation of sexual impulses, because women can then
use sex to manipulate men.  In _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, the
female child is taught false modesty for the same reasons.  As in "The Sick
Rose" and many of the notebook poems, sexuality expressed in secret gives a
forbidden pleasure and is a by-product of religion:  it almost makes sex a
secretive ritual, shrouded in mystery.  To forbid joy in the open is to
create a trap for it in darkness.

Am I making sense?

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:59:56 -0500 (EST)
From: bouwer 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: A Villanelle for Charlie K.
Message-Id: <199704051759.MAA25159@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

          THE WAKING
       Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

                 ***********
  
I am sending this Villanelle to Charlie K. 
There are for me here and there echoes of what 
Blake is talking about.
I am, however, also genuinely in need of more 
Villanelles in the English language. So could
anybody reading this, with another example, please
send it to me, on or off the list. I hope I am not
misusing the list. But it is the only quick way I 
can reach a maximum number of English professors.
(Sorry, Ralph D., but they have their uses.)

Gloudina Bouwer

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:42:52 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Villanelles
Message-Id: <199704051842.MAA09348@dfw-ix12.ix.netcom.com>

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That  Good Night";  Oscar Wilde 
in "Theocritus" are examples of the  villanelle.  Lang, Dobson,  Auden, 
and Empson ("Slowly the Poison the whole bllod stream fills") have also 
employed the form in English verse.

Susan Reilly


You wrote: 
>
>          THE WAKING
>       Theodore Roethke
>
>I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
>I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
>I learn by going where I have to go.
>
>We think by feeling. What is there to know?
>I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
>I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
>
>Of those so close beside me, which are you?
>God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
>And learn by going where I have to go.
>
>Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
>The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
>I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
>
>Great Nature has another thing to do
>To you and me; so take the lively air,
>And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
>
>This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
>What falls away is always. And is near.
>I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
>I learn by going where I have to go.
>
>                 ***********
>  
>I am sending this Villanelle to Charlie K. 
>There are for me here and there echoes of what 
>Blake is talking about.
>I am, however, also genuinely in need of more 
>Villanelles in the English language. So could
>anybody reading this, with another example, please
>send it to me, on or off the list. I hope I am not
>misusing the list. But it is the only quick way I 
>can reach a maximum number of English professors.
>(Sorry, Ralph D., but they have their uses.)
>
>Gloudina Bouwer
>
>

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:52:37 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Some villanelle's for Gloudina
Message-Id: <97040512523796@wc.stephens.edu>

If you can get hold of a book edited by Phil Dacey and DAvid Jauss 
called _Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional
Forms_ (Harper, 1986) you will find  8 or 9 villanelles by such poets
as Marilyn Hacker, Richard Hugo, Donald Justice, Thomas Disch, Denise
Levertov.  If you can't find the book, I would be happy to send them
to you by e-mail (but offlist--I suspect copyright problems).  There is
an index in the back of the volume that classifies the poems by verser 
form.  I assume you already have access to the villanelles of such
poets as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and A.C. Swinburne (Pigsbrook to his
enemies--of which I am not one). I think it's a safe bet that John
Hollander has written villanelles, but I can't think offhand which
of his volumes might include them.  YOu might also check a collected
Robert Penn Warren--that's just a guess, but it sounds right to me.
Tom Dillingham

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 14:37:22 -0600 (CST)
From: Darlene Sybert 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Jim Morrison/Hendrix
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

My apologies to the list...

When I started getting all these queries about my reference to
Jim (sic) Hendrix and Blake, I was puzzled.  How could anyone
old enough to be a member of this list not know about that 
relationship???  (And when someone said, isn't it "Jimi," I
thought, no that's a different guy!!)

Finally, one of the private inquisitors happened to mention
a couple of Hendrix's songs, and it came through my fogged brain
that Hendrix was not the person to whom I meant to refer.
It should have been Jim Morrison of the Doors (did I get it
right this time???)  Does that make more sense?

Sorry, I have no idea why I typed  Hendrix. I know little
about him at all and had no idea his name was rattling
around in my unconscious for some reason...

I'm sure most of you are aware that the Doors name was
appropriated from Blake's lines about cleansing the
doors of perception and infinity and that Morrison read Blake
at college and was an admirer.

(I hope I have the right name, now.  I have a feeling
I should quit posting to lists until after examinations 
are over.  I'm almost afraid to send this one!).

Darlene Sybert vsa
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.
					-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

------------------------------

Date: 05 Apr 97 16:23:34 EST
From: vultee <76507.222@CompuServe.COM>
To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" 
Subject: re: villanelles
Message-Id: <970405212334_76507.222_FHU55-1@CompuServe.COM>

The entry on villanelles in _The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics_, besides providing a concise history of the genre,  includes the names
of many of its English-speaking practitioners. In addition to the sources
mentioned in previous postings,  Miller Williams's book _Patterns of Poetry_
contains two examples, one by Williams and the other by Donald Justice.

Speaking of Roethke, by the way, here's another Blake- (and worm-) related
quote, this one from "The Long Waters":

"Mnetha, Mother of Har, protect me
>From the worm's advance and retreat, from the butterfly's havoc,
>From the slow sinking of the island peninsula, the coral efflorescence,
The dubious sea-change, the heaving sands, and my tentacled sea-cousins."
 
Denise Vultee
 

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 16:51:41 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: In Mourning
Message-Id: <97040516514139@wc.stephens.edu>

In a famous letter to Alexander Gilchrist, the artist Samuel Palmer
described William Blake in glowing terms--he said

"He was a man without a mask; his aim single, his path straightforwards,
and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy."

>From what I know of him, the same could be said of Allen Ginsberg--not
perhaps as great a poet as Blake, but a great and good man and a poet
of exceptional range and influence.  Inspired by Blake, and a wonderful
"tuner" of Blake's songs.  I am deeply saddened by his death.
Say Kaddish.  
Tom Dillingham

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 16:57:42 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: re: villanelles
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

One of my favorites, though not a Blakean one, is Elizabeth Bishop's "One
Art."  (It's in the Norton Anthology of Poetry and many other standard
collections.)

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: 05 Apr 97 19:00:27 EST
From: vultee <76507.222@CompuServe.COM>
To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" 
Subject: re: Jim Morrison/Hendrix
Message-Id: <970406000027_76507.222_FHU36-1@CompuServe.COM>

Darlene Sybert wrote:
"Hendrix was not the person to whom I meant to refer.
It should have been Jim Morrison of the Doors"

Too bad.  Much as I like the Doors, I can't help agreeing
with Darlene's earlier posting: The man who gave us "Are
You Experienced?" and "Axis: Bold As Love" surely would
have done some very interesting things with "My silks and fine array."

Denise Vultee

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:44:04 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Dictionary
Message-Id: <97040518440468@wc.stephens.edu>

Who could plumb the depths of hugwal/wahu's ironies.  Not this pig!
(Accolades to the sharpeyed reader who catches that allusion to yet
another significant contemporary poet.)  Even so, let us explore the 
matter of the dictionary.
I have always taken it as a matter of faith that a mark of even a good
poet, certainly of a great poet, is a kind of radical freedom with the
language she or he uses--everything from rugged independence of convention
through active defiance and obliteration of rules and expectations when it
comes to language.  Part of the earlier thread about Walcott and others has
to do with the assertion of independence from the conventions of an oppressive
language and at the same time a demonstration of the power to overcome the
limits set by both the language itself and the social or cultural values it
embodies.
But we have the assertion that Blake is the last great poet untrammeled by
the evil devices and engines of the "the dictionary."  How so?  Well, 
Blake was fairly "personal" in his spelling on occasion and almost always
personal in his punctuation (but "rules" of punctuation were still very
fluid then, more so even that spelling, but spelling was also relativley
fluid).  Either this is an assertion that Blake was the last great poet
of the English language or that all poets since him have been slavishly
or involuntarily limited by the tyranny of the dictionary.  The former
might be argued, I suppose, though I would not accept it.  The latter seems
entirely unhistorical, since I can think of many poets (not just Gerard
Manley Hopkins and ee cummings) who have treated the language with great
independence and quirkiness, even creativity.  
So I wonder if hugwal/wahu may be confusing anglophone poets with 
francophone poets.  Now a case could be made about the French if only
because their own poets complain all the time about the domineering 
and repressive forces of their Academie and its constrol of the 
dictionary and the rest of the language.  Poets from Chenier to Hugo
to (certainly!) Rimbaud to Artaud to the glorious Francis Ponge have 
all, in various ways, threatened to grab their language by its throar
throat and either shake it out of its smug certainties or obliterate
meaning altogether (and Mallarme more or less succeeded at that).  (Ponge,
by the way, is a major anti-Blake poet, if I understand him right.)
(And then there is Jabes -- accent grave over that e).  
But how is this true of English poets.  Certainly Shakespeare would never
have seen a dictionary (much less the OED), unless possible he perused
John Florio's Italian/English translation dictionry--but so what?
Milton didn't use a dictionary either, nor would have Pope (and I would
include them where wahu has left them out in favor of Tennyson).  What is
the evidence that poets since Blake have been intimidated by the dictionary?
Regularized spelling and punctuation just offer the independent poet more
opportunities to refuse to toe the line, while others (James Merrill comes to
mind) may show their virtuosity and originality while scrupulously chalking up
the prizes for spelling correctness.  
It's probably not worth arguing--but the dictionary seems to me the least
of threats to poetic creativity in this urizenic world.
Tom Dillingham

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 17:34:24 -0800
From: Chris Sachs 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: new member inquiry
Message-Id: <3346FDA0.101A@pacbell.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Thank you for your attention. I am an English major student and my first
question is in regards to Jim Jarmusch's movie: Dead Man, starring
Johnny Depp, 1996.  An Indian mistakes Depp for the real William Blake
and quotes a beautiful poem:
          
            "Every night and every morn
             Some to misery are born
             Every morn and every night
             Some are born to sweet delight
             Some are born to sweet delight
             Some are born to endless night"

What is the title of this poem?  Thank you.    Chris Sachs

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 17:52:12 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain 
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Mourning
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970405205112.266750de@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I got an e-mail this morning stating that Ginsberg was diagnosed with liver
cancer and had 4-12 months to live.  But he and we were deprived even of
that.  I had an awful day today, and then when I turned on the news I saw
the announcement of Ginsberg's death from a heart attack.  My heart sunk,
not just for Ginsberg's sake, but for a whole era that is now symbolically
ended.  Now I'm left alone in Ulro with the rap generation.  Too bad
Ginsberg couldn't make it to Daylight Time.  If there are any commemorations
in New York, which there must be, I'll let you know.

At 04:51 PM 4/5/97 -0600, TOM DILLINGHAM wrote:
>Inspired by Blake, and a wonderful
>"tuner" of Blake's songs.  I am deeply saddened by his death.
>Say Kaddish.  

Yizkadal v'yiskadach sh'may rabah ....

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 19:53:47 -0700
From: "Charlie K." 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704060250.TAA21532@gost1.indirect.com>

        How to know Love from Deceit

    Love to faults is always blind
    Always is to joy inclind
    Lawless wingd & unconfind
    And breaks all chains from every mind

    Deceit to secresy confind
    Lawful cautious & refind
    To every thing but interest blind
    And forges fetters for the mind

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 20:52:40 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Memoriam: Allen Ginsberg
Message-Id: <199704060252.UAA07022@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com>

I can't let Tom's post go by with no answer as though Ginsberg's death 
is just another newsbyte. What a huge loss, and he was writing and 
reading until very recently (didn't he just have a poem or an article 
out in the NYer?) I'm very grateful, to say the least, that I went to 
hear him read exactly 2 years ago when I had the chance in Boston, 
where he attracted a crowd of mostly young college kids.  At that time 
he was in fine form--it's hard to believe he's gone.  The  honesty of 
his work was a great inspiration to me--an honesty which I'm sure I'll 
never come close to living up to.  But more than that, of course, I'm 
grateful for the work he left behind. 


Susan



You wrote: 
>
>In a famous letter to Alexander Gilchrist, the artist Samuel Palmer
>described William Blake in glowing terms--he said
>
>"He was a man without a mask; his aim single, his path 
straightforwards,
>and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy."
>
>>From what I know of him, the same could be said of Allen 
Ginsberg--not
>perhaps as great a poet as Blake, but a great and good man and a poet
>of exceptional range and influence.  Inspired by Blake, and a 
wonderful
>"tuner" of Blake's songs.  I am deeply saddened by his death.
>Say Kaddish.  
>Tom Dillingham
>
>

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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #40
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