The Poems of William Blake
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Poetry
The Poems of William Blake Details
The Poems of William Blake. Edited and Arranged with a Preface by John Sampson. 396 Pages.
Reviews
I am not much of a poetry fan but have always loved the writings of William Blake. Here is a free version of some of his works. It is readable, and the fact that it is free prevents me from complaining too much.The formatting is terrible. There is no table of contents. There are no hyperlinks. These problems make it difficult to know what exactly is in the book, and it makes it hard to find what you are looking for. As far as I can tell this collection contains the entirety of Songs of Innocence and Experience and a few other poems. Also there are few line breaks. An 8 line stanza is often seen as a single paragraph with semicolons separating the original lines. With any other poet this would make the book unreadable, but Blake's words are so rhythmic and clear that you can easily read them out loud or silently even when formatted poorly on the page. Some reviewers have complained that there is different text and/or missing poems when compared to other versions. I won't argue with them because, although I have read Blake several times, I am no expert.So if you have to read Songs of Innocence and Experience right now and don't have any money, go ahead and get this book. You will enjoy it. But in the long run it is much better to get a better formatted version - preferably a hardbound volume that will look beautiful on your shelf and provide satisfying poetic readings for years to come.