Book Reviews

William Blake was not only a painter and a poet, but considered himself a prophet of God, and thought every Christian should be one too. His work has attracted critical attention from its earliest days, and his body of poetic work is among the most-considered we have in English.

Mostly, these poems are brave and direct meditations on common life, but not in the aestheticized version of the confessionals wherein the poet cuts an onion so lovingly, so specifically, so poetically that we're supposed to go re-enjoy the world in all its quirky wonder thereafter. Rather, they're concerned with the real difficulties of trying to please one's father; of having friends lose touch due to drug abuse, with everything.

Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism helpfully chronicles the rise of advertising in periodicals, highlighting its methods and subjects, from shoe-blacking to tooth powders.

Let’s get one thing straight: there is nothing wrong with shooting an albatross. The albatross was never taken commonly to be a symbol of Christian piety, nor were they “tutelary spirits” of a particular region, as Coleridge’s friend Wordsworth somewhere suggests, and as guides of a voyage they were perfectly useless. To kill one (or several) was not to declare one’s independence of nature, or of a God’s provision, and thus mount up on waxen wings, but was instead an effective way to get fresh meat at sea.

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot called poetry “a raid on the inarticulate.” I’ve always liked the phrase. It implies the chaotic mess of life in a postlapsarian world is mimicked in language’s fragmentary nature. It also implies poets can do something about it, diving into the deep as they find treasure and nourishment. Having found them, they can offer them for our benefit. There’s something clandestine about the whole operation—a raid—reminiscent of the Promethean theft of fire.