Overall, I think it is the most perfect poem in the English language. I mean if there has to be one such.
Joanna
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(having written this before various answers were posted)
That's an odd claim. OTOH, it sure was a great poem picturing seedy, rotten, nasty, death filled London.
I read plenty of Blake and studied his printmaking and so on. I was mostly stoned or drinking or both, but that really helped to contemplate his imaginary worlds. I mean they were child-like, as in fairies and gobblins of the benign sort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blake_Dante_Hell_XII.jpg
It's the likeable benign streak in Blake that detracts at least for me. Maybe I just have a darker form of romanicism.
I forget which poem it was that I got lost in for hours, reading flipping pages. So I think what makes Blake great was his ability to create a world. That's something very usual, or maybe I haven't studied enough poetry or didn't recognize it before I read Blake.
In terms of sound and English as a language, I put a lot on Donne. Reading Donne, especially out loud tricks the ear and mental voice into sounding like a liquid something, which is a part of English that has been nearly erased.
Anyway, I had great arguments with my buddy Noel in Iowa City over Blake. I remember, or think I do, of being mildly put off by his ambiguous sexuality that never seemed to quite manifest or materialize. And a related or similar impression about his spiritual worlds which couldn't quite break free of Christianity. I liked him for these qualities, recognizing them as distant, long dead cousins. But surely at the time ... he could have broken out of that English prudery.
CG
