Poet Stanley Kunitz, who died two weeks ago, was an avid Blake reader. He edited and offered the introduction for The Essential Blake, an Ecco Press/HarperCollins publication (1987).
From the Washington Post: In 1930, [Kunitz's] first book, "Intellectual Things," was accepted by a young Doubleday editor named Ogden Nash who marked Mr. Kunitz for promise. Mr. Kunitz took the title from a William Blake line ("For a tear is an intellectual thing"), and his homage to Blake, John Donne and other English metaphysical poets made him distinct from more-lyrical American contemporaries.
I enjoyed this conversation about Blake between Kunitz and Jason Shinder, from year 2000. Here's the link:
www.bu.edu/agni/intervi...-shinder.html
Excerpt:
Stanley Kunitz: I suppose that above all what I learn from Blake is that the imagination is a portion of the divine principle, that energy is eternal delight, and that everything that lives is holy. I don’t think that human liberty and imagination have ever been better served than by William Blake, and that’s why I love him. Here’s what he says in Jerusalem, a passage I keep posted over my writing desk:
Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me, Yet they forgive my wanderings. I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination. O Savior pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love! Annihilate the Selfhood in me; be thou all my life! Guide thou my hand, which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages, While I write . . .
From the Washington Post: In 1930, [Kunitz's] first book, "Intellectual Things," was accepted by a young Doubleday editor named Ogden Nash who marked Mr. Kunitz for promise. Mr. Kunitz took the title from a William Blake line ("For a tear is an intellectual thing"), and his homage to Blake, John Donne and other English metaphysical poets made him distinct from more-lyrical American contemporaries.
I enjoyed this conversation about Blake between Kunitz and Jason Shinder, from year 2000. Here's the link:
www.bu.edu/agni/intervi...-shinder.html
Excerpt:
Stanley Kunitz: I suppose that above all what I learn from Blake is that the imagination is a portion of the divine principle, that energy is eternal delight, and that everything that lives is holy. I don’t think that human liberty and imagination have ever been better served than by William Blake, and that’s why I love him. Here’s what he says in Jerusalem, a passage I keep posted over my writing desk:
Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me, Yet they forgive my wanderings. I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination. O Savior pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love! Annihilate the Selfhood in me; be thou all my life! Guide thou my hand, which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages, While I write . . .
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