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William Blake

OMG does anyone else feel like there's nothing to talk about when analysing the poems? Post ANY points about the songs of innocence and experience here!

Reply 1

the_alba

12

I wrote an essay as an undergraduate on Blake, Baudrillard, oppressive rhyme, 'watcher' figures and the importance of sleep. It would probably freak out an A-level examiner though, as it wouldn't tick all their silly boxes. Still, it did well for me at university.

Sorry, this isn't very helpful, I'm just being nostalgic. But my point is basically that there's always loads to say - too much even - on a major poet like Blake. New things come to mind all the time.

Reply 2

prash_s90

16

danielrsmith2104

OMG does anyone else feel like there's nothing to talk about when analysing the poems? Post ANY points about the songs of innocence and experience here!

i know ...i dont what to do aswell..

ditoo unfortuantely

I think it's a mistake for them to have given Blake as an a-level poet. He's too complicated and downright weird to sit well with the ol' "hey look! a simile!" thing that you need to do. Also, just studying the songs of innocence/experience gives you a totally wrong view of what kind of poet he is. I wrote a 5000 word essay on him last term, and it was easily the most interesting assignment I've had because the man was such a legend.

Oh well, can't change that. Here are some of my notes on a few of the poems: [sorry I'm having trouble posting this for some reason, so I'm going to try it in a few blasts, rather than one long post]

Reply 5

spider from mars

13

London
(My favourite poem in the whole wide world)
Ok this poem stands out in Blake's work for how incredibly structured it is. You can get loads of analysis out of this fact. The structure is 4 quatrains rhyming ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter (4 iambs per line). Iambic pentameter (5 iambs per line) is the one generally associated with the natural rhythms of speech, so having these lines shorter than that adds a feeling of restriction. Also, the metre is very regular. You hardly ever get poems that are so uniform - again this adds to the feeling of restriction.

Reply 6

man123

8

How do you find out the quatrain rhythem and meter of Blakes poem?

Reply 7

crankycaz

2

Well, quatrains are when you've got 4 lines that rhyme in ABAB style. So you just look at whether the last words of each line rhyme. Not sure whether half-rhyme still counts or not.

For meter, you've got to do that dum-de-dum thing.
So taking Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud', I think you'd split it like this:

I wan-dered / lone-ly / as a / cloud.
So it's iambic tetrameter (where you've got 4 iambs).

It's kind of difficult to explain, it's just the placing of stressed and unstressed syllables really. But you don't have to do into great detail at this level. Just saying that 'London' is in iambic tetrameter and the restricing effect this has would be fine I should think!

Reply 8

man123

8

Thank you ever so much for the help! + rep for you thanks

Reply 9

spider from mars

13

If you're having trouble with rhythm etc then I strongly recommend Stephen Fry's book "The Ode Less Travelled." It's actually for people who want to write poetry, but it just makes understanding all the mechanics of poems (ie form, structure, meter) so damn easy.

Reply 10

hotgoose

We're just told to write a bunch of contextual information which relates to whatever poem we're talking about.

Reply 11

spider from mars

13

Here are some more of my notes on "London":

The only line that really stands out from this (see above) is line 8: "The mind forg'd manacles I hear." This is not regular iambic tetrameter (feel how you naturally emphasise both "mind" and "forg'd"? Slows down your reading of it, and makes it irregular). It is really important that this line is emphasised in this way, because it explains the whole problem shown in the poem - the people are not restricted by anything around them, but have created a prison in their own heads. The fact that this line comes slap band in the middle of the poem is also important; if it was at the end of the poem, then it would seem like a solution, but the idae is that you can recognise the problem and still not be able to escape from it (shown by the fact that the descriptions of the problems, in their tight structure carry on after this recognition).

To be continued...

Reply 12

spider from mars

13

Vocabulary - there is a lot of repetition in the poem. This emphasises the restriction further (a limited vocabulary = a limited imagination, importance of the imagination in Romantic poetry). For example, the word "every" is used 7 times. This has a double importance, given that the word "every" itself has a feeling of repetition in its meaning anyway.

Reply 13

spider from mars

13

The charter'd Thames - a river is something natural, usually associated with unmovable force (the way that rivers cut their way through the land, changing the landscape as they go). But here it is being forced to follow a certain path, emphasising how unnatural the whole situation is. Also, the word "chartered" often means something that has been given official sanction, showing that at least some of the blame is being levelled at those in charge (I should tell you that the essay I wrote was essentially a Marxist reading of Blake, so my analysis is bound to be a bit skewed at times!). This is emphasised by the cold indifference of the institutions (the Church and the monarchy) in stanza 3 to the plight of the people. These institutions have been dehumanised by representing them with buildings rather than people.

Reply 14

spider from mars

13

Sorry that was all in pieces - for some reason it wouldn't let me post it all in one bit.

Hopefully that was helpful. If anyone wants me to post anything about the other poems, then let me know which ones and I'll see what I can do :smile:

Reply 15

EmilyRichards

that was fantastic! thanks a lot for that.

I'm studying Blake's Songs for A level. My teacher has had a baby and left us so I'm feeling a bit worried with no proper help! this is really useful!

xx

Reply 16

Howard

5

Do you know what Blake is? A dead poet, that's all. :smile:

Reply 17

OnlyMe!

16

I'm writing an essay on 'London' right now and I find that I have more to say about his poem than I do about many of the others...

Reply 18

spider from mars

13

OnlyMe!

I'm writing an essay on 'London' right now and I find that I have more to say about his poem than I do about many of the others...

I guess because it has more of the typical poetic stuff in it than many of the others. He wasn't generally fond of the whole simile/alliteration/etc kind of stuff, because it can really limit how you interpret things and he was into expanding the imagination.

Reply 19

xrachel_morrisx

Something else about London, it might seem obvious, but "mark in every face I meet" implies that he is walking in an opposite direction to everyone else, figuratively (in his way of thinking) as well as literally. Similarly, "wander" suggests that he is the only 'free' thing in the "chartered streets"; unlike everybody else, he isn't restricted by the "mind-forg'd manacles" created in the minds of not only the oppressors, but also of the oppressed.

William Blake

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