Customer Reviews

Complete Writings with Variant Readings (Oxford Standard Authors Series)

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Mr. Keynes' edition of Blake's complete poetry and prose is the one I've used not only at Shimer College, but also in Russia and China when I taught Blake there. Mr. Keynes arranges Blake's writings chronologically. The reader can thus more clearly see how Blake's mythic system evolves. Clarity matters when a reader falls into a universe as visionary and fluid as William Blake's.

Each poem is a like a magical brick in the mystical structure Blake ultimately builds. His work begins in Innocence, a world where science, imagination, love, and wild beasts blithely dance in balance. When the cruelty, greed, and fears of Experience blight the peaceable kingdoms then society and the human soul split into warring factions.

Blake has been called apocalyptic. In his late great prophetic books families, lovers, societies, and the ecosystem fall to bits. But Los, Blake's heroic artist, "keeps the divine vision in times of trouble." Techno-science and institutionalized greed overshadow the earth, but Los keeps on building Golgonooza, the gorgeous city of art which ultimately connects heaven and earth. This can bring Jerusalem (the feminine divine)back into the heart of Albion (the universal humanity). When the feminine divine suffuses masculine power all things coalesce in a cosmic orgasm of art, science, pleasure, and prayer. "There is no body distinct from the soul!" Mr. Blake proclaimed in his Marriage of Heaven & Hell. "Everything that lives is Holy!" cries Oothoon, whose indestructible purity embraces the love that's "free as the mountain wind." She's become a role model for some exuberant Shimer students.

To truly partake of Blake please treat yourself to at least a few of the full-color illustrated editions that are now wonderfully affordable. The Dover editions are a bargain--but I order the Blake Trust (Princeton University Press) editions for my classes as well as Sir Geoffrey Keynes' lovingly edited Complete Writings. Buy this book! It can bring you bliss!

While Sir Geoffrey Keynes (brother of "that other Keynes") did a much-lauded service with this edition, wary readers should note that the punctuation is deliberately "corrected" by the editor. The Erdman and Ostriker editions at least attempt to give you what Blake wrote. Insofar as, in the illuminated works, the punctuation was Blake's own and not that of a drunken compositor, that seems an important consideration.

(I went with the Erdman; the Penguin's notes are better in many ways, glosses rather than commentary, but Penguin books are so damn shoddy these days, & the Erdman is published as a book that'll bear some reading without falling apart. Look at the old 2dhand Penguins in used-book shops; few of today's Penguins will survive so long, I fear.)

William Blake is one of the most underrated writers of all time. He is also a wonderful visual artist. Unlike his contemporaries, such as Milton, he created his own Mythology. A complex heirarchy of preternatural beings. Many people have spent years trying to piece together the puzzle of his complex philosophy. Any fan of enlish literature, and desire to be challeged by a writer gifted not only in meter, but also in content will be sad that they had not read Blake sooner. He comes very highly recommended. He affects the way you think. I close with his words: "Forth from the dead dust, rattling bones to bones/ Join; shaking convuls'd, the shiv'ring clay breathes,/ And all naked flesh stands: Fathers and Friends,/ Mothers & Infants, Kings & Warriors."

This was my first William Blake book. First and foremost, the book was almost falling apart as it was so used and marked and written on the margins all over by the person before me and also the paper seemed old. This book should not have been sold. I think the previous owner wanted to let it go and did not know how as he had, it seems, a strong relationship with this book over the years. I could not look in it as it was overwhelming. I donated it to the local library.

Also, I don't think this is a right book for someone who wants to be introduced to Blake and his poetry. That was another thing. But if the book was new, then I could have returned it. But it was not worth to spend more money to return it.

I could go on forever about the beauty and complexities of Blake's poetry, but nothing I could say could communicate the experience of reading Blake, so my advice would be to read through this collection yourself and then read Northrop Frye's analysis of Blake's work. I have yet to do so myself, but I hope to do so eventually. Blake's poetry is not something to be understood by the rational faculties and just needs to be absorbed in all it's beauty by reading and rereading it.

I like this anthology better than any others I have come across (belive me I've seen many) because it arranges all of the poems in chronological order rather than trying to organize them for you. This way you can read them in the order they were developed or choose any other way to read them and still be able to find them by the date. This edition is also more complete and does not contain sections of poems like 'Jerusalem' or 'The Four Zoas', but the works in their entirety. The letters at the end are also an unexpected delight to read.