Appreciating Poetry: Form

The form of a poem means the way in which it is structured, the number of lines  in a stanza or verse, the number of verses in the poem overall and so forth.  There are several aspects to bear in mind when considering the form of a poem.  The first one is to identify the form of a particular poem. The second is to  compare the form of the poem considered with the forms of other poems and the  third part is to consider whether the choice of form adds to the value and  pleasure of the poem and, if so, in which way.

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Appreciating Poetry: Introduction

Appreciating poetry is not a skill that comes to many people automatically – instead, it is something that requires a measure of effort and patience.  However, it is certainly worthwhile. Poetry, good poetry at least, can distil  knowledge of the world in a way that helps readers to realize that other people  have the same feelings and experiences that we do or else provides a spark of  inspiration to help us make sense of the apparently cruel indifference of the  universe – other forms of philosophy are available, of course.

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Poetry of Blake: The New Jerusalem

Blake’s poem The New Jerusalem has become one of his most popular works, in large part because of the stirring music put to it by Sir Hubert Parry. It rings out on so many occasions, from church services to the entrance of the England cricket team. Indeed, the poem seems to have become inextricably linked with the nature of English-ness.

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Poetry of Blake: The Human Abstract

There are contradictions at the heart of just about every facet of the human experience. Nowhere is this more true than with religion or, at least, the Christian religion. Ask any person claiming to be a Christian if she is glad that Jesus was abandoned by all His friends and associates and then tortured to death and she is likely to say no.

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Poetry of Blake: A Warsong to Englishmen

English history is marked by the numbers of times that groups of men have been called together to fight, most commonly overseas with a view to conquest but within the country as well. English troops dominated Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as France and other parts of Europe and, in combination with imperial troops, allies and mercenaries, across the Americas, India and east Asia, Africa and Australasia.

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Poetry of Blake: Cradle Song

Blake’s poem Cradle Song rests upon a contradiction, a contradiction that provides a rather unsettling sentiment that will be familiar to most if not all parents. How many times has it been said of a baby sleeping or wriggling in a cradle that he or she is thinking some secret thing, that the child is really rather intelligent and that she or he knows what we are saying. The contradiction here, therefore, is that the seed of knowledge is within the child already and that, far from seeing something fanciful or sentimental, we are merely seeing what will inevitably arise whether we want it to be the case or not.

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Poetry of Blake: The Tiger

Blake’s poem The Tiger is one of the most well-known in the English language and generations of schoolchildren have grown up learning its lines – or, to be more accurate, learning the first few lines. The opening lines are full of wonder and awe and the tiger itself appears mysterious but somehow safe.

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Poetry of Blake: The Chimney Sweeper

Blake’s tale of chimney sweep boys is particularly touching for me because my great grandfather was one of the last of the sweepers in Britain (I am Irish peasant on one side and East End of London working class on the other). I also have something of an increasing sense of claustrophobia and so the thought of being caught in one of the ‘coffins of black’ fills me with a particular sense of dread.

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Poems of Blake: A Poison Tree

Blake’s poem A Poison Tree is one of the poet’s deceptively simple lyric works, which appears straightforward on the surface but is related to a variety of more complex issues. The word ‘lyric’ is not just a vague adjective here but denotes poetry which was either intended to be sung or else which is eminently suitable to be sung, perhaps accompanied by one or more musical instruments.

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Poetry of Blake: The Book of Thel

The Book of Thel is one of William Blake’s allegorical poems on the themes of innocence and experience. It is written in a series of, mainly, five line stanzas which are unrhymed and composed of iambic septameter (i.e. seven feet in a line).

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