A Poison Tree

                William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” is really more of a harsh lesson that all must learn and follow than a poem. It talks of how when you are angry about something related to your friends, such as he ate your sandwich, you forgive him, however when your “foe” (for example, the school bully) does the same thing (eats your lunch), you plot and plan what you want to do to him, and your anger grows. With your friend, you realize you should let it out, and you talk, or forgive, but against an enemy that you already don’t like, you don’t want to forgive him of his trespasses; you want to get even (an eye for an eye). Most people don’t actually go through their plans of vengeance in the name of justice, but in Blake’s poem, he shows the extreme, where a man got angry with an enemy, so he didn’t say anything and didn’t forgive, and over time it grew like a tree, and when the time eventually came that he saw his enemy down, he was happy. There is something from all of this that we can learn- we need to forgive our anger, at least forget, or it will grow and grow into something that is as much a part of yourself as your arm or fingers, and it may consume you. Blake’s imagery in his poems, this one in particular, helps me to see exactly what he is trying to get across, because I can imagine just how long and consuming a tree could be when you grow and feed it, and your potential joy at something equally potentially dreadful. Blake leaves these images and meanings in his poems for a reason, and we would be wise to learn by them.

Community Project: William Blake and His Poetry

In our small class at CAL, there are several different blogs being written, and while the blog http://bamf-williamblakeandhispoetry.blogspot.com/ has very good materiel, I must be honest in the fact that one of the main reasons why I chose their site was because it has a fish tank at the top, which is, sadly, hilariously fun to screw around with. But getting on to the more seriousness of the actual blog, the blog “William Blake and his Poetry” is about exactly what you would expect, William Blake. This blog’s main theme is about mainly his poems, as specified in the name. To someone that hasn’t been studying romanticism as we have; much of it is very useful information that is probably something that that person didn’t know before. Some of the blog posts also have pictures that are related to their posts, and that would be very helpful to a newcomer as well. Two specific posts that I noticed when reading through, included, one, a post about our blog, which I did not realize until I had already chosen this blog to write about, and two, the post called simply “The Lamb.” “The Lamb” stood out to me because of how cleanly written it was, in that it had the poem it discussed above it, easily accessible, and two, because of its religious views of Blake’s poem. Using a religious view was a great way to interpret that poem, because religion can be your own views and most importantly, you beliefs. If you believe in something, your thoughts will be incredibly more personal than pure facts. Out of the posts that I read, “The Lamb” was my favorite.



The Blog “William Blake and his Poetry” had Nick Aicher, Elizabeth Martinez, and Taylor Kunz as it’s authors.

Reading Response #3: "The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake" By: Thomas J. J. Altizer

“The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake,” By Thomas J. J. Altizer, Blake uses Satan to speak about the good of Christ. The visions of Blake have shared many of the Christian and how it was originally an apocalyptic faith or that type of way. This shows how the twentieth century is becoming to the new rebirth of the apocalyptic theology. Just as if it’s a new religion being born. The rebirth of the new language is taking effect over all old Christian faiths nothing more than that. This quote, “Absolute compassion or the compassion of Christ, a compassion truly reversing all satanic judgment and repression; but a compassion in actual apart from that reversal; hence necessity of Satan, the absolute necessity of Satan for apocalypse itself, and the primacy of Satan in all apocalyptic vision, and fuller the apocalyptic vision,” shares lots of in sight of Blake’s vision. This shows how Blake’s vision uses evil to speak of the good, nothing other than these shares apocalyptic theories. Blake’s was truly a Christ, but more of a true romantic poet. The revolutionary vision was too reminded of what has been forgotten or the changing few theories of the twentieth century era. Blake was found as a true visionary. It’s was stated that Satan was primary because it help Blake get to his main, to use evil to bring and to talk about the good, also to talk about how apocalyptic and how the twentieth century have changed and the rebirth of the new Christian religion of the non-apocalyptic. Blake was meant to bring it back, to give notice of what will be forgotten with nothing remember. There is nothing that can’t be forgotten. It was for all his readers to carry it all out, to spread the true theories. 

This article states many things that have been forgotten in the Christian religion. Nothing more than the rebirth of this religion. More of which Blake is stating that everything is being forgotten, from which was become of the Christ Religion. The apocalypse faith was losing its touch.  Satan was spoken about as a main essential of Blake’s own visions. Speaking from evil to good, the author was an able to share more and more details of his main idea. This was also expressed through the main goal of stating how important Satan was to Blake’s visions this shows that to share and completely express his feelings towards the forgot Christian faith, everything is changing. Blake’s revolutionary vision’s have been stated to bring back for was has been lost and nothing else. That the nothing upon these vision’s than the clarity of Christ and Satan. This article has share mean explanations of Milton and meaning of Blake’s internal Revolutionary vision. It share’s that the ultimate sacrifice was the “Self Annihilation” of God. This shares that to save the human race from the depths of evil or good. God himself sacrificed himself. Nothing more than this is more ultimate. This is brought to the attention as the “Self Annihilation” of God is nothing more in fact the “Self Annihilation” of Satan himself. Why was it so ultimate of the self annihilation God? Was it cause of the death of Satan himself? Blake himself was a truly deep into the Christian. Deeply in thought nothing more relating more and more to God.  Blake himself was fascinated by God and Christ; he spoke with Satan to speak of the good, nothing other than that. Blake’s visionary mind was the one that connect Satan and God. Nothing has changed from the well being of wanting the connection of the two. The Revolutionary Visions of William Blake have many explanations and many that explain differently, other than this. For each individual reader there’s a new tail to tell. William Blake is truly a True Romantic.

Reading Response: Blake's "The Four Zoas"

William Blake’s works have had centuries to be studied and taken apart piece by piece. Articles and even entire books have been written in study to many single poems by Blake. In the 1996 edition of the article, “The Review of English Studies,” Phillips Cox writes about Blake’s poem, “The Four Zoas,” and says “Of William Blake's three epic poems, The Four Zoas is inevitably the one which presents the reader with the most obvious and enduring problems.” My interpretation of what he means here is that “Zoas” brings up the hardest problem for us to take care of, that it brings up something we don’t want to change in ourselves. Later in the review, Cox goes on to discuss how the poem has not only Blake’s normal level of prophetic style, it also bears marks of being revised and edited over many years, making “The Four Zoas” one of his hardest to interpret pieces. Much of the remaining article is spent both criticizing and approving of other reviews of “The Zoas.” Cox especially goes over a book on the poem by George Anthony Rosso. Phillips Cox starts out his review of Rosso’s book quite critically, and continues his disapproval while saying things like: “he started out with a good idea here, but then his back up is faulting in many ways.” As a review, it is sometimes hard to follow, but the general idea was taken easily enough, Rosso didn’t have a full grasp of the poem, and neither do I.


My original thoughts after reading “The Four Zoas” went entirely along with Cox’s starting ideas that this poem is even more confusing than other Blake poems. Only after I had read the poem a few times did I start to see a personal meaning that I could apply. The first section especially I can understand the easiest, that wisdom is not something that is bought, it is found through experience. Blake’s next two paragraphs are also relatively easy to understand, if you take the meaning at a face value, that is. Blake gives many examples of how it is easy to sit back and laugh at another’s pain, as long as you yourself are fine. One major example that he gave in the poem stuck out to me: “It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements… To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house; To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children, While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.” The reason this had more of an impact on me than the other things he mentions, is because I really do not care for my neighbors, so when I look at it truthfully, I might be just like what he describes here, and that made me realize how Cox’s opening statement was truthful that “The Four Zoas” presented the reader with obvious and enduring problems. Towards the end, Blake says this: “It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity: Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.” The italicized part of this really only struck me the second time through, as I realized that for once, Blake was speaking of himself and it almost felt like a promise, a promise that he will stand up in a time when others do not. We as a people would do well to learn from Blake in this “promise” especially since these days we live in rejoicing in other’s loss and our gain is even more of a problem than it was in Blake’s day. Maybe Blake did have some foresight after all.

Sources:

Cox, Philip. "Blake's Prophetic Workshop: A Study of 'The Four Zoas'." The Review of English Studies 47.187 (1996): 425+. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Jan. 2011.

Prose Poem: Computer's

Electric cords running everywhere as snakes running the jungle. With the CMD and them console codes. Nothing more than a computer of the cyber space. Sending files, and more files, with much support. Nothing more than the Transport layer and then bits sending back and forth. The cyber space is nothing more than an endless space of nothingness. Computers are like the endless abyss, becoming more advance with endless memory. To the network and the endless coding, nothing like the social community. Stating to the life of computers, to the endless chats, computer states, and how html and php are the interface of the national web.To the electrical clouds and wireless connections, what to advanced to next? To the everlasting computer programs, or the everlasting battery life. Nothing to the next RAM update or even the endless computer updating to the fastest update. What is to come next? The mother board to update or even the Os update from Vista to Windows 7, maybe to be Xp to Windows 7. Electric cords running from the endless trail, the electricity like the thunder storms rushing around. Nothing like the endless cyber space. Nothing like it, like an abyss to and endless space. What’s to happen in the past or the future, without the cyber space? Nothing like the endless burning of the speed of the CPU and the processes. Many different computers are arranged theses can be from fast to slow. Fast as the NAS cars on a Saturday morning, or as slow as a snail reaching its destination. What’s to abide to get your computer up to the top speed, what’s to say nothing? As it’s a brand new age of the cyber space, nothing to overcome, and nothing to beat, but to keep improving. Electric cords running everywhere as snaking running the jungle or the forest.

Blogging Community Assignment: "The Best of Blake"; A Day, Per:1

Click here to view "The Best of Blake" @ http://www.theworksofwb.blogspot.com 

. . .You know you want to (;

The blog “The Best of Blake” by Becca Gaulke, Kendal Kern, and Pang Thao, like my own blog, revolves around the Romantic poet William Blake and his works. Their layout is organized and simple and is very appealing at first glance. On this blog there are a variety of pieces that surround Blake, such as a video, paintings, quotes, poems and annotations of articles.

The post that stuck out the most to me was “True or False?”. In this post Kendal analyzes the quote “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” Kendal goes on to talk about the significance of a friend and the relationship you have with them. A friend is a person whom you trust and can count on for pretty much anything. They are definitely the last person you would expect to do you wrong. When a friend whom you care about does something to hurt you, it is hard to let that go. An enemy, is not someone you would typically have any kind of relationship with, therefore it is not that hard to believe that they would do something to wrong you. It is almost expected of them. Your friend however, is someone close to you, who should be there when someone such as an enemy hurts you. It feels much more personal to have someone you care about betray you, and it makes perfect sense that they would be harder to forgive. This is what Kendal was saying about Blake’s quote and I completely agree. They chose a quote that everyone, especially teens, can relate to. Everyone, at least once in their lives have been hurt by a friend, and I’m sure it was not easy to forgive them. This quote was one I enjoyed and I wish I would have used it for my own blog. Kendal did an excellent job of analyzing what Blake was trying to convey.

 “The Best of Blake” will help readers to understand what Blake was trying to say in his short stories and poems. Reading these posts also helped to connect the writings of Blake nearly 200 years ago, to modern day experiences. Overall, this is a blog I would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about William Blake and his writing.

Blake is my homie - Blog, B day7

The blog Blake is my Homie, has all the same intentions. All about Blake. This blog can be found by Clicking Here or by going to BlakeisMyHomie.blogspot.com. This blog has many intentions to writing about Blake and only him. There are many different things that are found interesting including the Slide show found at the top of the page, and many of there post. The one that really stuck out was the relationship between "The Little Boy Lost" and "The Little Boy Found" and how they related to each other. It shows the complete contrast of the two poems and what the deep meaning they both hold. It was found that both poems reveal a message of fear. It shares how a child is feared to be lost or left by parents, both poems are link together as if it was the same boy that he was once lost and was found again. It explains how each poem is found to be connected to one another and why the titles are so similar to one another. They share how the Boy is brought back to his Mother by his innocents, and that the lord made all his fear disappear. Just the blog itself shares a lot about Blake and how his writing was deep in thought. For others who know nothing about Blake and his writing style on poems, or even anything he writes share a lot of in sight information, it shares a lot of deep thought in there answers to each post they have posted to share with everyone. Not only would deep thought share in the learning, this Blog would help teach them many different meanings to each poem shared and how he was found to be part of the romantics group of poets.