[New-Poetry] Blake

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/features/0,,2218251,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
The original political vision: sex, art and transformation


Dissent and emancipation were holy for William Blake. He could teach our prime minister so much about how to be radical 

Terry Eagleton
Wednesday November 28, 2007
The Guardian 


'Everything as it is, infinite' ... detail from The Good and Evil Angels

One reason Gordon Brown gave for not holding an election was to have time to roll out his vision. It is not a meaning of the word that Britain's greatest revolutionary poet would have recognised; William Blake, born 250 years ago today, had what George Bush Sr called "the vision thing" in the way other people have headaches or fits of laughter. At four he glimpsed God's head at the window, at eight a tree shimmering with angels. For Blake, being a visionary meant seeing beyond a version of politics centred chiefly on parliament. "House of Commons and House of Lords seem to me to be fools," he wrote. "They seem to me to be something other than human life."



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