Customer Reviews

The Healing Power of Blake: A Distillation

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book. I keep it by my armchair and open it when there's a quiet moment. And when I do, the power of Blake comes to me and helps me throughout my day. Only Blake speaks with such passion and strength, and his poetry is presented here unadulterated by titles, footnotes or page the poetry in landscape format so that Blake's long lines need not be broken. Whatever your previous experience of poetry, this book will enhance your life in a way that only such a distillation of Blake could achieve

What a wonderful book! I highly recommend it as an introduction to Blake. I had read his "Songs of Innocence and Experience," but I did not know his prophetic writings were so powerful. I also enjoyed the humor found in extracts from Blake's letters and other writings. Phrases from the poems come back during my quiet moments, inspiring me with their beauty, imagination and fire. Dr. John Diamond has done a beautiful job in selecting and laying out the passages. His introduction is also stimulating and insightful. In addition, the book is well produced -- it is put together with friendliness and care. (And the cover is exquisite -- worth the price by itself!)

This is a wonderful collection of Blake's later poems is specifically edited to enhance their therapeutic power and comprehensibility. This anthology, more than any other I have come across, helps to make these obscure works accessible; and the layout and punctuation has deepened my experience of them.

The striking graphic presentation and expansive horizontal layout of "The Healing Power of Blake - A Distillation" is the most obvious outstanding feature of this book of William Blake's poetry, edited and introduced by Dr. John Diamond. However, akin to a pearl within its well designed shell and beneath the shimmering waters it calls home, this poetry book offers its own precious gems of unforgettable wisdom. I highly recommend "The Healing Power of Blake - A Distillation" as THE gift of healing poetry for someone you love.

I have always loves Blake - in particular the facsimile editions with Blake's watercolor designs bordering the beautiful copper-plate text, but nowhere have I been struck by the power of his writing to the extent that I have by this volume. The layout that Dr. Diamond has chosen adds immeasurably to the force of Blake's words. The imagery in these passages leaps off the page, and the reader is given a compelling sense of the creative visions that must have inspired Blake to write.

I was recently in London to hear Dr. Diamond speak and was astonished at the literary intelligence of the English. They really loved this book! I think it's such an important work, and wish that every student of literature could look at the classics in the way Dr. Diamond looks at them- for their life energy raising properties.

Blake is always beautiful, and more profoundly so in the style Diamond has laid his words out.

In The Healing Power of Blake - A Distillation, in order not to disturb the flow and symmetry of Blake's lines, John Diamond, M.D., has adopted an unusual approach to his presentation of the great Romantic poet's work--he has positioned the lines vertically on the page, so that their full impact can be appreciated. By, in addition, using a larger than normal font, and strategic spacing (as he does in the collections of his own aphorisms and poems), Diamond brings the attention of the reader to the distinctive thoughts and utterances that comprise Blake's work. For example, he devotes an entire page to the following:
Do what you will, this Life's a Fiction,
And is made up of Contradiction.
Such positioning of the text and identification of core sentences eliminates the distraction of a more crowded page, facilitating access to one key statement at a time.

Diamond vows that he has a passionate commitment to furthering Blake's deeply moving and evocative prophetic writings, from which this "distillation" has been gleaned. Their purity and truth he ascribes to them being "free of all inhibitions and distortions of publication and performance." What also appeals to Diamond about Blake's work is his lack of adherence to a formal and structured religion, so that, unlike Gerard Manley Hopkins, the former poet was able to explore his own visionary insights without fear of recrimination for stepping out of line.

In addition to a selection from Blake's prophetic works, in The Healing Power of Blake - A Distillation, Diamond has also included a few excerpts from his other poems, as well as from his marginalia and letters, adding his personal touch to the prose by versifying it so that, in structural form, as it already does in content, it transcends the realm of the ordinary. Diamond has also taken the liberty of punctuating Blake's writing "in the ancient way: for the strongest vocal expression of the swelling power of his Pulsation."

Although Diamond acknowledges, in general, the source of this work, it would have been even more helpful if he had indicated which pieces of Blake's writing he has adapted for this book. Nevertheless, the former author has, in this collection, achieved his intention to the full--conveying Blake's love of the mercifully intertwined triumvirate, Christ, God and Man. A powerful work, The Healing Power of Blake - A Distillation should appeal to all adherents to poetry and the prophetic. [Reviewer for BookPleasures.com]