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| | Poetry and Designs (Norton critical editions) |  | Author: William Blake
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
Category: Book
Buy Used: $21.99
Used (3) from $21.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 1494243
Format: Import
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 618
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
ISBN: 0393044874
EAN: 9780393044874
ASIN: 0393044874
Publication Date: April 1, 1980
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ex-Library. May have library markings or stickers. Otherwise, standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Wonderful Edition of the Texts of William Blake November 23, 2008
The editors of this text did a fine job. I've noticed especially their choice of page breaks and quotations on the more difficult poems (the Prophetic Books) are admirable. They've made the poetry from our beloved William Blake accessible to a wider audience by editing his text to decrease the chance of confusion through mere ambiguity.
 Very solid edition of Blake's works October 13, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
William Blake is one of those soaring pioneers of the human imagination whose visions and their scope make you feel rather humble at times. His works are quite diverse and his output during his life very considerable. Blake's longer poems, such as 'Jerusalem' or the 'Four Zoas', would easily make large books of their own in any edition of his works.
This Norton's edition contains selections from several of Blake's major works, including his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, his visionary poems, as well as his political poems. The book also contains many scholarly aids including a chronology of Blake's life, critical essays by leading Blake scholars, and colour pages showing Blake's beautiful illustrations to some of his works (as well as being a great poet Blake was also a painter and engraver of very considerable ability). While critics never seem to really reach any consensus on what Blake's poems really 'mean' (Blake is read variously as a Gnostic by Harold Bloom, a revolutionary critic of England during the industrial revolution by Terry Eagleton, or as a disciple of Swedenborg and Boehme by others) Blake's poems contain incredible beauty and visionary power and polyvalent symbols energised with multiple meanings. I think if one consistent theme can be read from Blake and his poems, and I think this was his own intent, was that the power of the human imagination and what it produces in art transcends any attempt to 'bracket' or reduce it to a dead and static system of lifeless scientific symbols; I imagine Blake would class many critics of his work as agents of Urizen, trying to carve out of the fiery energized cosmos of the living human mind the perfect frozen archetype which orders all things perfectly but in doing so, misses the whole point.
Blake's poems then should be read not by trying to impose what you want to see in them but by trying to let them speak to you and perhaps, ignite your own spark of imagination, as Blake has done with many brilliant poets from Yeats to Allan Ginsberg and many others.
Very good text for introducing Blake to students September 11, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a book is quite good as most Norton Critical Editions are. It has a lot of what is needed by students for a course on Blake or, more likely, a course that spends part of a term on Blake.It has some biographical material and some maps of England and London at the time Blake lived. There are also a good helping of black and white as well as color plates of Blake's illuminated works. The color plates are only good - the color is not produced beautifully. The student will only get an impression of the true power of Blake's artistry. However, a good teacher will point the student to the Blake Archive at:... so the students can see the works more completely with variants and in better color (if you have good video cards and monitors). One of the best parts of this book begins on page 176 where working drafts are shown and compared to the final versions. There is also a nice selection of critical writing on Blake - criticism from Blake's time through the present. There is also a useful bibliography. In some ways this is "Erdman Lite", but it is much more portable than Erdman and for an introductory course on Blake it is probably sufficient. I am glad that I have it in my library. But please don't stop here!
Blake's Poetry and Designs April 20, 2000
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
Nice book, but too bad its front picture cover is defaced by Norton's double-layer of big gold stickers with high-tack adhesive that makes them impossible to remove without adhesive remaining on the cover.
Come and see a world in a grain of sand . . . July 11, 1996
51 out of 51 found this review helpful
This is absolutely the best compendium of Blake's work whicharticualtes an outstanding range of his vision. Thisedition acknowledges the poetry and color paintings of a consumate craftsman of the imagination on high quality, acid free paper and is nylon stitched and bound in signatures to last a lifetime. Books are rarely made this way but the Norton edition is a beautiful rendering of the first, and perhaps, primary British Romantic poet.
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