"And I wrote my happy songs, every child may joy to hear": The poetry of William Blake in the middle school classroom

Miss Stretchberry wanted her pupils to love poetry (Creech 2001) She read to them daily the couple from the works of acknowledged masters and contemporary author of poemss and encouraged them to write. Jack, an initially skeptical and reluctant writer (boy don't write poetry; girls do), was intrigued through William Blake's "The Tyger." (I have retained all of Blake's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.) He answered to Miss Stretchberry's oral reading of the metrical composition by writing that he really didn't understand it. However, he admitted, "at least it unhurted good/in my ears" (Creech, 2001 p 8) Not alone did it sound good in his ears, on the other hand it continued to do in like manner especially after he composed his possess poem based on "The Tyger's" rhyme scheme. He wrote Miss Stretchberry that the entires of the poem were in him "like drums/beat-beat-- beating" (Creech 2001 p 9)

The impact of Blake's metrical composition upon Creech's fictional character was strikingly similar to the consequence "The Tyger" had upon individual of our major American bards as a child. In an interview Bill Moyer asked Adrienne Rich about the first metrical composition that she remembered touching her to [i]or[/i] at a great depth and awakening her somehow. She answered:

I think it was Blake's "The Tyger" I was given metrical compositions to copy, that was in what manner my father taught me to do handwriting. "The Tyger" was individual of them and it was in like manner musical and mysterious. The miraculous image sank very deep actual early. (Moyers, 1995, p. 347)

Whether fictional or actual, Blake's ballads of Innocence and of Experience (1967 [1789 1794]) have been captivating readers and awakening them to the many raptures of poetry for more than sum of two units hundred years. Recently, Blake's metrical composition has appeared in a number of children's and adolescent works of literature as a dominant theme or a symbolic touchstone. For example, in addition to Sharon Creech's have affection for that Dog (2001), we find Nancy Willard's Newbery Award winning A Visit to William Blake's Inn: piece of poetrys for Innocent and Experienced Travelers (1981); this older picture volume captured the imaginative vision and spirit that we find in all of Blake's work.

The end of this article is to explore a certain number of of Blake's poetry that I find suitable for middle seminary readers and its relationships to a number of generally received works for young adults. I highlight the lays of Innocence and of Experience and give an inkling of how Blake might be combineed to other literary and musical works. My faith is that this exploration will encourage teachers to reread or read a certain number of of Blake's poetry with their learners as a means of helping them pierce into his particular visionary world and the universe of verse in general.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Most not away readers probably know Blake's numbers through his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which present to view the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul" From my lengthy experience reading Blake I have lay the foundation of that a relatively small number of readers and teachers are familiar with his great prophetic metrical compositions These illuminated works are drawn out complex, and made difficult through Blake's seemingly idiosyncratic symbolism. For example, The work of Urizen, Milton, and Jerusalem require, for me at least, a great deal of effort, numerous readings and the use of critical studies. The lays however, are accessible to all readers of all ages and at all horizontals of literary sophistication.

The lays of Innocence and of Experience (originally published separately as sum of two units books) is one of Blake's "illuminated books" The individual metrical compositions were skillfully and imaginatively integrated into copperplate engravings which he then colored by dint of hand with pen or paint brush. Thus, each piece of poetry is, to use Blake's hold terminology, a "Particular." These poem-engravings, plane in the poorest quality facsimiles, shine and sing with a vitality that delights the one and the other eye and ear:

The line is part of the design, the design part of the line in an extraordinary condensed and almost ritualistic way; the visual completenes the insistent poetical measures the impersonal skill of the calligraphy, make go round these poems into achieved works of art that look to resist conventional interpretation. (Ackroyd, 1996 p 122)

Although these works of art have multiple layers of possible meaning, several general themes arise when we read the ballads repeatedly. Some celebrate the spontaneity, naive vision, glee and exuberance of childhood. Others are darker, ominous and explore the special be of importance tos and fears of childhood. Perhaps they more adequately capture the zeitgeist of our not away time in which "hurried," latch-key, and abused children appear not to be uncommon. Lastly, several of the piece of poetrys deal with questions of morality and provide readers with designs of how to live in the world.

"The Tyger"

"The Tyger" certainly is the greatest in quantity well-known of the Songs. level folks who don't read numbers recognize the opening lines: "Tyger Tyger burning bright,/In the forests of the night. ." (Blake, 1967, unpaginated; all regards to Blake's poems are from this illustrated and unpaginated collection). above the last decade while teaching at universities and secondary place of educations in Ghana, Ukraine, and Norway, I fix that if students knew any English poesy they knew Blake's "The Tyger"