William Blake was not the greatest poet nor the greatest engraver, but no one has paired those two as he did. He would still be legendary today had he done so w

William Blake was not the greatest poet nor the greatest engraver, but no one has paired those two as he did. He would still be legendary today had he done so well at either. He always struck me as a transitional form, halfway between the Classic and Romantic poets. Like William S Burroughs was the grumpy uncle of the Beat poets, the Romantic poets took his counsel and his humanity as starting points. He said that his printing process was dictated to him in a dream by his dead brother Robert. He had many such experiences — coming into his sitting room at night to literally pluck words out of the air, asking Mrs. Blake to place another table setting so he could converse with the prophet Isaiah over dinner. Very likely he was slightly mad. He printed very few copies of most of his works. He made 56 copies of “Songs of Innocence,” more than any other work. His greatest work — longest, most involved, bringing together all his cosmology in one place — was Jerusalem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem:_The_Emanation_of_the_Giant_Albion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem:_The_Emanation_of_th...). He printed 5 copies, and only colored one. It’s quite the experience to read “America a Prophecy” 200 years after he wrote it. He had high hopes for this new society across the ocean, and was disappointed that it was founded on the original “fallen state” of slavery.