Poetry Of Songs Of Innocence And The Little Black Boy Essay

As a new way to criticize the Romantic period, desperate times call for desperate measures and it did through the use of children’s point of view in Romantic poetry. A period of fifty years called Romantic period included the French Revolution, the American Revolution and wars of national independence in Europe. William Blake, one of well known Romantic poets, commented on his society by viewing it through the child’s eyes in the two sets of ‘Songs of innocence and of Experience’. It is said that ignorance is a blessing but not according to William Blake.

Poems and songs may have strength in literary terms, but have you ever wondered what makes them powerful? In this essay, there will be analyzed two poems “The Boy Died in my Alley” and “Daddy”, as well as the song “Firework” in which theme, metaphor, and repetition are the literary devices that make them powerful.

In Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Richard is struggling to survive in a racist environment in the South. In his youth, Richard is vaguely aware of the differences between blacks and whites. He scarcely notices if a person is black or white, and views all people equally. As Richard grows older, he becomes more and more aware of how whites treat blacks, the social differences between the races, and how he is expected to act when in the presence of white people. Richard, with a rebellious nature, finds that he is torn between his need to be treated respectfully, with dignity and as an individual with value and his need to conform to the white rules of society for survival and acceptance.

Nikki Giovanni's "Poem for Black Boys" is a poignant literary work that addresses several issues concerning the young black male in America and the conflicting views taken by members of the African-American community during the Civil Rights Movement with an inclination towards the peaceful movement perpetuated by the likes of Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. and his non-violent contemporaries. Giovanni's use of allusion, imagery and the sardonic humor of the speaker blend effortlessly to denounce all of the negative connotation of the young African-American male and to sound the battle-cry to black male youths that while society-at-large may place them in a box, it is up to them to prove society wrong.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

This poem is just the same as the real event. This poem tells about the white woman as the speaker/narrator and the black boy as the observed. In the first stanza the author shows the comparison or the contrast between the white woman and the black boy (lines 1-13). The second stanza, the author shows the apparent disparities to that interrelationship emerges (lines 14-20) and the third stanza is about insight into how the scene is equal to American culture on a larger scale (lines 21-34).

Simple, limited, and unadventurous all describe William Blake’s life (Greenblatt, Abrams, Lynch, Stillinger). Blake was born November 28, 1757 in London, England and his artistic ability became evident in his early years. Blake had a very simple upbringing and had little education. His formal education was in art and at the age of fourteen he entered an apprenticeship with a well-known engraver who taught Blake his skills in engraving. In Blake’s free time, he began reading writing poetry.

In this poem it talks about different people and two different races. The white guy is the speaker and he contrast his life with the black guy’s life. In this poem the tone, the imagery, and organization is very understandable and detailed.

William Blake was born on November 28, 1757 in the city of London, where he spent most of his life. His family lived in a respectable, but not pretentious, lifestyle. He was one of seven children of James and Catherine Harmitage Blake, but only five lived into adulthood.

Born in 1757, poet William Blake grew up through the height of the Enlightenment period, where individuals begin to focus on themselves and discover their emotions, instead of living to achieve approval from a greater God. It is evident in Blake’s poems The Poison Tree and The Garden of Love that he is greatly influenced by these revolutionary ideas that are being discovered throughout his early life. Blake seems to have significantly removed himself from the Church and their teachings, due to the recent revelations of the importance of focusing on humans and their emotions. These ideals coincide with the movement during the eighteenth century where people began to realize that there is no sin in indulging in personal pleasure, regardless of what the Christian church has preached for hundreds of years. In The Garden of Love and The Poison Tree it is evident that William Blake is influenced by the Enlightenment ideals of individualism; therefore, he grapples

In the Neo-classical novel Candide by Voltaire the theme of innocence and experience is prevalent through the protagonist, Candide, especially through his journey of finding the prescription of how to live a useful life in the face of harsh reality. In William Blake’s collection of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the two characters, tyger and lamb, show how we lose our innocence to gain experience. Although the innocence and experience are paradoxical terms, we can solve the paradox by analyzing these two works.

The Contemporary Black Poetry Project featured three award winning African-American poets from Michigan: Toi Derricotte, Naomi Long Madgett, and Herbert Woodward Martin. The poets ranged in age from seventy-five to ninety-three. The Contemporary Black Poetry Project featured four public readings this fall. I attended the fourth reading which took place on October first in Harbor Springs, Michigan, at the Harbor Springs United Methodist Church. All of the poets’ pieces and performances were exquisite, however in this essay I will focus exclusively on Mr. Herbert Woodward Martin’s work. African American culture, music, and history greatly influence Mr. Martin’s poems.

William Blake, writer and artist born in 1757 was a simple unadventurous man. You may know some of his poetic pieces but his official education was in art. 10 years old Blake attended the Royal Academy of Arts School just after entering drawing school. William Blake went on to doing numerous great things like creating his own books, creating paintings, and engravings, getting married to his wife Catherine Boucher, and more. I took interest in Blake as an author because of the way he believes in his imagination and how we see the world. Imagination is about feeling and emotion, he seen the world differently, as if our humanity is bigger than our body, or how we see the world.

Blake’s two poems are both told from a child’s point of view, which is different from many works and forces adult readers to realize the fault in society’s standards through the bleak eyes of the many unfortunate children.

The works of William Blake cannot be entirely discussed, so my project particularly focuses on 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'.