As with the last Blake collection, this CD was bought to be recorded onto cassette and absorbed as I walked round Sheffield — I got it at the Gower Street branch of Waterstones or Blackwells after a meeting of the HCI Group Exec Committee at UCL in January '94 or '95. But as I said before, the absorption didn't really work. Apart from anything else, the poems, especially the shorter ones, just come at you too fast to allow your mind (well, my mind) to keep up. I need more breathing space, and I need more variety in the voicing of the poems. In fact, for aural administration of Blake, Mike Westbrook's approach works best.
But probably better than all of those is to read the poems on the page, illuminated by Blake's etchings. A few years back I bought the Complete Illuminated Books
for my eldest niece. This gift was returned on the basis that she wasn't 'ready' for pictures of naked men. I don't know what Blake would have thought of that — but I can make a good guess. But it's an ill wind that blows no one any good, and now I've got the book to pass on to the Boy, who you can see below, on the swing by the local William Blake mural, just 90 minutes ago.
The mural has an excerpt from The Echoing Green:
"Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls and boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Echoing Green."
I haven't seen this before: you can now get this recording bundled as a Preloaded Digital Audio Player
.
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