[stylist] Poem - "Blake" - First Draft

Thu Jun 5 03:53:17 UTC 2014

Bill,
Before I comment on your poem which  is  a marvelous Ars Poetica, I have
spent inordinate time googling your comment at the end. The quote comes from
a song, in which the favor is "Kill." I cannot help wondering why you picked
this quotation. I realize Shredni Vashti's God was a polecat/ferret that
killed hens among many other evil acts. He asked that one favor, "Kill." 
Your poems provide an education in so many things. William Blake could take
several years of study to appreciate his many talents, accomplishments,
other than poetry, and his revolutionary and dissonant character. I have
just waded through Dante's Inferno, and never knew that William Blake had
made his illustrations so much a part of some of the cantos.
To your poem. It is filled with beautiful lines and thoughts and near
metaphors, at the same time, some with turbulence. The internal rhyme holds
it all together. I have not read William Blake's poetry, but you must have
patterned this poem after his style. 
I love the challenges you give us with your unusual words, quotes, and
references. You are so prolific that if we were to critique every poem in
depth, we would find ourselves well-educated poets with  a larger
vocabulary.
Why do you address us all as "blinks?" Are the blind known for blinking more
than sighted persons?   

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
Houts via stylist
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 1:25 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Poem - "Blake" - First Draft

HI Poets, Novelists and Severe-Eyed Critics:

Here's a poem I wrote the day before yesterday.  It's basically a poem 
about being a poet, with nods to our illustrious forebear, William 
Blake.  There's lots of literary stuff in this one, but I think it 
should be fairly easy to read.

--Bill

---

Marooned on the isle  of 3am,

counting my litter of skullborn runts,

once I could win with these infant hounds;

now I'm not so gall as to call them gold.

My hoard is heaped with sighs, my eye with woe.

O for Blake to show, that soul of rhyme,

that captain cool and strange;

O for him to come ashore and put me straight,

to say:"From one Bill to the next, your text

is wild with thrashing whales, your rhyme

beguiles, and sonnets sail for isles as rare

as dreaming X." My eyes would go from glum

to glee, and set my hand to setting down

some fervent verse, some sonnet skullblaze free:

as high as swans,as bread as Easter's rising.

-- 

"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar!"

           --Saki

_______________________________________________
Writers Division web site
http://writers.nfb.org/
stylist mailing list
stylist at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
stylist:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/jackieleepoet%40cox.net