Sonnets

[genoveva]

What I would love here are some recommended sonnets, or recommended poets to check out who have written sonnets. On my list so far include Shakespeare (of course), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (shiver!), and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Any suggestions would be welcomed!

[MikeK]

My three favorite are Wordsworth (who I believe wrote more sonnets than any other poet), Frost, and E.A. Robinson. I don't really have time this second, but I could link to some of my favorites of theirs later on.

[ClaesGefvenberg]

On my list so far include Shakespeare (of course)You should definitely have a look at What is your favorite sonnet? (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22) then... :thumbs_up

/Claes

[Kelly_Sprout]

I posted one of my own sonnets called "Summer's End" not too far back right here in the Poetry forum. There are several different styles of sonnets, each with its own supporters and figurehead. You might enjoy doing a search on the Ask Jeeves search engine (www.ask.com) using the term "What is a sonnet?" followed by "Who wrote sonnets?"

[ShoutGrace]

I particularly like this sonnet :



William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Sonnets from The River Duddon: After-Thought

1 I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
2 As being past away.--Vain sympathies!
3 For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
4 I see what was, and is, and will abide;
5 Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
6 The Form remains, the Function never dies;
7 While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
8 We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
9 The elements, must vanish;--be it so!
10 Enough, if something from our hands have power
11 To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
12 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
13 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
14 We feel that we are greater than we know.

Notes

1] This sonnet is a postscript to a series of sonnets, written at intervals between 1806 or 1807 and 1820, in which the poet follows the course of the river Duddon from its source, where Westmoreland, Cumberland and Lancashire meet, to the sea.

7] Cf. Moschus, Lament for Bion, 102, "But we mighty and strong, we men so wise in our wisdom," from that part of the poem in which Moschus speaks of the mortality of man as contrasted with the yearly revival of vegetation.

[Lycosparks]

One of my favorites is by John Keats: When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace,
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

And By Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

And lastly (sorry for the long post), the first poem I ever memorized,
by Alfred Lord Tennyson: O, If I Were Loved As I Desire To Be!

O, were I loved as I desire to be!
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
Or range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear, - if I were loved by thee!
All the inner, all the outer world of pain,
Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;
As I have heard that somewhere in the main
Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.
'I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,
To wait for death - mute - careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, though the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.

[Petrarch's Love]

Keats has some lovely ones. The heyday of the sonnet is of course the Renaissance. Noted English Renaissance sonneteers include Phillip Sidney (Astrophil and Stella), Samuel Daniel ( Delia), Edmund Spenser (Amoretti ), Wyatt, and Surrey. You might also be interested in reading Petrarch's sonnet sequence The Canzoniere, since he's really the one who made the sonnet fashionable (the Durling translation is usually considered the best English version if you don't read Italian).
Actually it occurs to me that (rather than me trying to list hundreds of sonneteers) just going to Sonnet Central (http://members.aol.com/ericblomqu/sonnet.htm) would be useful. It has lists of well known, mostly English, sonneteers from all periods up through the the early twentieth century and selected sonnets (though unfortunately not complete sequences) from their work. You can find at least the better known Renaissance sonneteers in their entirety on the Luminarium (http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm).

[MikeK]

Ah, the other members here are so on top of things that they've already posted a couple of the sonnets that I had in mind (namely "Ozymandias" and Keats' "When I Have Fears..."). A couple other favorites of mine:

By Robert Frost:

The Oven Bird


There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in the showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird wouild cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

and:


Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Wordsworth, on his own feelings ABOUT the sonnet, in sonnet form:


Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

And more Wordsworth:


"The world is too much with us..."

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending , we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


It Is a Beauteous Evening

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea;
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder - everlastingly.
Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

John Donne:


"Death be not proud..."

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

One by E.A. Robinson:


Dear Friends

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own:—the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores:—
So friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

And finally, one by Longfellow:


The Cross of Snow

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face - the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

[mono]

Well, well, it seems as though everyone has already exhausted all of my suggestions, thinking of every sonnet-writer I could nearly think of, classical and contemporary. A few others to add to the list off the top of my head: John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who wrote few sonnets, but worth reading), Lord Byron, Wilfred Owen (often depressing), Matthew Arnold, Sir Walter Raleigh, Charles Best, Ben Jonson (very lovely!), William Blake, Robert Browning (additional to the elegant Elizabeth Barrett-Browning), Dante and Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hardy, no doubt, wrote some, too.

I will likely think of more the moment I take a glimpse at my bookshelves (my 'mini-library' :D), but you already have many good suggestions! :nod:

[Virgil]

Do not forget Gerard Manly Hopkins:


The Windhover

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

and


God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

[Virgil]

And this is a particularly great one by Thomas Hardy


Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... Petrarch... but don't forget Guido Cavalcanti and Dante (especially his great cycle, La Vita Nuova, which establishes something of a foregrounding to the Divine Comedy and his obsession with Beatrice) who are both beautifully translated by Dante G. Rossetti (and don't forget Rossetti's own cycle, the house of life). Another Renaissance Italian master you might look into is Michelangelo Buonarotti (yes... THAT Michelangelo... he was actually quite a great poet on top of his other efforts). In English: Wyatt, Spencer (love the Amoretti which culminates in the great Epithalimion), Sidney, Milton (some brilliant hard sonnets which almost seem carved of stone), and Shelley's "Ozymandias" is indespensible. The French also have a good many of great sonnets. Baudelaire does some brilliantly nasty things with the sonnet; there are some lovely sonnets by Theophile Gautier, Verlaine, Paul Valery, and Gerard Nerval. You might also check out Neruda (especially his well-known "100 Love Sonnets") and J.L. Borges who is as brilliant of a poet as a writer fiction. You might look especially for his sonnet about the birth of the sonnet (the exact title escapes me... something to the effect of "to a tuscan poet of the 13th century"). I would also recommend looking into what e.e. cummings can do with the sonnet and also Richard Wilbur, a true master of classical poetic forms (sonnets, ballads, etc...)

[mono]

Oops, I happened to remember, also, some poems I posted by Michelangelo (I had never known he wrote poetry, too), translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Just click here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3965), where I posted them some time ago. ;)

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch's Love;

I know the Durling translation has long been touted as the best translation of Petrarch (although there are some truly brilliant versions of random poems here and there by various other translators/poets that I find better). Nevertheless... have you read any of the more recent David Young translation? I have you to seriously sit down with this book (too many books, so little time... Mallarme's phrase to the effect of "time is long, and I have read all the books" is surely empty rhetoric, eh?... speaking of Mallarme... another great sonnet writer!). Anyway... the work has recieved glowing reviews by persons no lesss knowledgeable than W.S. Merwin and Harold Bloom.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi St. Luke's Guild. Welcome to the forums. You seem to be pretty up on your sonnets (always a good thing).:) No, I haven't had the chance to look at the Young translation, partly do to the so many books so little time factor and partly because I read Italian fairly well. It's been on my list to look at, though.

[stlukesguild]

Thanks for the welcome. I'm probably up on poetry in general. Perhaps the poem relates more to my own area of discipline (art) more than the novel. Then again... I'm also a big reader of various short fictions and of essays. Having something approaching a mstery of a second language would be nice... my own schooling included 3 years of German, but I'm beneath pathetic in what I've retained. I can only just fathom a few poems by Goethe.

[Petrarch's Love]

I'm probably up on poetry in general. Perhaps the poem relates more to my own area of discipline (art) more than the novel.

I figured with your screen name you must have an interest in visual art. So, are you more interested in creating art or in the art historical angle (or both)? It's great to see someone with an interest in both art and poetry (you're not by chance a fan of early music too?--just a guess).


Having something approaching a mstery of a second language would be nice... my own schooling included 3 years of German, but I'm beneath pathetic in what I've retained. I can only just fathom a few poems by Goethe.


It is nice being able to at least get the feeling for poetry in the original language. I don't have a syllable of German. The closest I've come is my term of Old English this last year. I've always wondered if I would appreciate German lit. more if I could read and understand the original. I feel there's something I'm really missing there.

[stlukesguild]

Well I am a practicing artist/art teacher... but I am very much into most of the arts... visual art, literature, and music. I do like early music (if what you are referring to is medieval chant and plain song as well as Renaissance composers such as Monteverdi, etc... On the other hand, my preference for classical music actually includes everything from the very early works, through Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart through the Romantics, Impressionists, Modernists (some ;)) on through a number of contemporaries such as Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, John Zorn, etc... Besides this I make regular side trips into jazz (Miles, Monk, Ellington, Mingus, Tristano), the occassional trip back to classic rock (Beatles, Elvis, Stones, Dylan) and some real country/bluegrass (Cash, The Louvin Brothers, The Stanley Brothers, Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard (none of that cr@p light pop with a southern accent they try to pawn off as "country music" on the radio :(.

I agree that having studied another language can help give you something of a feel for a foreign literature. I've looked quite a bit at Old English (my own art work deals quite a bit with books/writing/languages and I've explored Anglo Saxon Runic as well as the language of Beowolf and the Seafarer. I've long admired Ezra Pound's translation of the latter. I have, however, made something of a more concerted effort to learn a bit more of Middle English. The only real way to read Chaucer is in the original (and I almost agree with Ezra Pound's declaration that anyone not willing to expend the effort to learn the few words needed to understand Chaucer in the original should be forever banned from reading good books :) ) Exploring a bit further in the area I was quite fascinated with the varaitions upon Chaucer's High Middle English (of London) when reading Langland's "Piers Plowman" with its more rural dialects. The experiences of Middle English gave me a much greater grasp of what Robert Burns and Gerald Manley Hopkins were doing... as different as they were.

I do agree that I often feel I'm missing something with certain German poets. The few poems by Goethe I can still read in German are unquestionably far better than any translation I've read. On the other hand, I do think that Holderlin, Celan, and Rilke have been brilliantly translated (as have many of the prose writers such as Kafka, Hesse, Mann and Grass). Coming back to Goethe, however, I am admittedly disappointed with what I have found in many of his poetic works in translation... as opposed to the quality of some of the prose works. Auden does a marvelous job on the "Italian Journeys".

[Petrarch's Love]

I do like early music (if what you are referring to is medieval chant and plain song as well as Renaissance composers such as Monteverdi, etc...

Yes, that's what I meant. I was listening to some Monteverdi as I typed the query. Sounds like you have a nice wide selection of musical tastes. I'm somewhere in the classical/ jazz/ classic rock category myself, and I've now got my new recording of Bach's Well Tempered Klavier playing. Heavenly stuff. :)


I agree that having studied another language can help give you something of a feel for a foreign literature. I've looked quite a bit at Old English (my own art work deals quite a bit with books/writing/languages and I've explored Anglo Saxon Runic as well as the language of Beowolf and the Seafarer. I've long admired Ezra Pound's translation of the latter.

Very cool. There aren't many Old English-ites out there. I would guess that having German would really help with the OE. I kept wishing I knew German as I started learning.


(and I almost agree with Ezra Pound's declaration that anyone not willing to expend the effort to learn the few words needed to understand Chaucer in the original should be forever banned from reading good books
:lol: Hadn't heard that one before. I'll have to keep it in mind for when I'm teaching Chaucer one day (I'm currently in grad. school but headed toward being an English Professor specializing in the Renaissance and Medieval periods).

Well, we probably ought not to hijack the sonnet thread any further. If you'd like to get to know some other members you might want to post a bit about yourself on the "introductions" thread under "general chat." See you around the forums. :)

[genoveva]

Thanks all for all the wonderful discussion and insight into sonnets. I have been offline for days researching and reading sonnets. Below I've pasted a few. Off to the library to check out some Petrarch and Spenser sonnets...


On the Sonnet
by John Keats

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of painéd loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.



Sonnet
by C. S. Lewis

The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall
About a dreaming garden still and sweet,
I hear the unseen bats above me bleat
Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,
And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.
Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet
For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,
Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall
With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear
With magic sponge can wipe away an hour
Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,
Why could a man not loiter in that bower
Until a thousand painless cycles wore,
And then--what if it held him evermore?



To My Books
by Caroline Norton

Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends, who can never alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,--
Let me return to you; this turmoil ending
Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,
And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,
Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:
Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,
Fancies, the audible echo of my own,
'Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime
My native language spoke in friendly tone,
And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell
On these, my unripe musings, told so well.


Pretty Words
by Eleanor Wylie

Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enameled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver disk,
Blue Persian kittens, fed on cream and curds.
I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

[genoveva]

have you read any of the more recent David Young translation?

Just today did I stumble upon a collection of Petrarch's sonnets translated by David Young. It's very interesting to compare translations. I do not know that I prefer Young's translation since it seems that some of the concentrated poetics get diluted in his translation. Here is an example:

Sonnet 1
translation Thomas Bergin

O ye who in these scattered rhymes may hear
The echoes of the sighs that fed my heart
In errant youth, for I was then, in part
Another man from what I now appear,
If you have learned by proof how Love can sear,
Then for these varied verses where I chart
Its vain and empty hope and vainer smart
Pardon I may beseech, nay Pity's tear.
For now I see how once my story spread
And I became a wonder to mankind
So in my heart I feel ashamed- alas,
That nought but shame my vanities have bred,
And penance, and the knowledge of clear mind
That earthly joys are dreams that swiftly pass.


Sonnet 1
translation David Young

All you who hear in scattered rhymes the sound
of heavy sighs with which I fed my heart
during the time of my first youthful straying
when I was not the man I've since become:

for the mixed style in which I speak and weep,
caught between empty hopes and empty sorrow,
from anyone who knows of love firsthand
I hope to find some sympathy- and pardon.

I can see now that I was made the subject
of lots of gossip among lots of people;
inside myself I'm often filled with shame;

shame is the fruit of all my clever ravings;
so are repentance and my knowing clearly
that every worldly pleasure is a dream.

~~~~~
Of course this is just one example. It is obviously easier to read with the Young translation, but I also feel a sense of "dumbing down" in the translation. I also don't like how Young has divided up the one stanza sonnet into four stanzas. Others?

[stlukesguild]

I also don't like how Young has divided up the one stanza sonnet into four stanzas.

Intriguing criticism. It would seem obvious that Young merely follows the more common Anglo approach to the lay-out of the sonnet which clearly draws attention to the 4.4.3.3. structure. Yours is almost a visual criticism... but quite valid. I have often found myself disappointed in books which attempt to print as many poems on as few pages as possible with the result of cramming multiple sonnets or ballads (etc...) onto a single page... or worse yet :eek: splitting such poems over two pages. One of the most egregious examples is in one book which translates Malarme. After an introduction stressing how important the visual layout... the look of a poem is... the publisher goes and mutilates the poems... splitting them up and cramming them together in a manner which ignores their integrity as a self-contained work of art.

[genoveva]

Yours is almost a visual criticism... but quite valid.

Yes! That does bother me! And, how true, poetry is also a visual art!

[stlukesguild]

"...how true, poetry is also a visual art!"

Indeed! I've often felt that the arts in general are not as easily categorized as the academics and historians may like. The line between prose and poetry is quite confusing when one is reading Shakespeare, Proust, Pater, and others. Blake toyed with the dividing line between the book as text and the book as visual art. One often speaks of the music of poetry, but it is often only in the extreme examples such as mallarme's 'Un Coup De Dés', one of Apollonaire's visual poems, or an example of concrete poetry that draws our attention to this fact. I think that the great book-makers/publishers such as Aldus or William Morris have always been well aware of the importance of the visual element (as well as the tactile... the scale and texture of the paper and binding) in creating books. There is a fairly large "book arts" movement today which works with the book as a total art form... combining text, typography, imagery, etc... but I have yet to come across any which are as successful at combining the original poetry with the visual elements as was William Blake.