Songs of Innocence and of Experience - William Blake

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

Genre: Poetry

Blurb (on back of book): This book appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

The work compiles two contrasting but directly related books of poetry by William Blake. Songs of Innocence honors and praises the natural world, the natural innocence of children and their close relationship to God. Songs of Experience contains much darker, disillusioned poems, which deal with serious, often political themes. It is believed that the disastrous end to the French Revolution produced this disillusionment in Blake. He does, however, maintain that true innocence is achieved only through experience.

MY OPINION: ***

Eh. I don't really like poetry. I don't like reading it, I don't like listening to it, I don't like writing it. I can appreciate it and I can tell when something is "good" and when something is not so good, but I wouldn't say I would willingly sit down and read/write some poetry when I could do something else.

However, I was forced to read this book of poems for my English class. That's virtually the only reason I'd ever pick up a book of poetry over a book of fiction. To be quite honest, I listened to this on audiobook and I think that probably made it a less interesting experience than if I had read it in a physical book. I sometimes found myself tuning it out or not understanding what I was supposed to be reading but I was glad we got to talk about it in class a bit.

All of the poems in the first part (songs of innocence) were, as the title suggests, very innocent. They featured themes of cute little lambs or children and youth and things like that, and I found them very endearing. It focuses on childhood and naïveté and the sudden transition to the darker, cynical passages in the second part (songs of experience) was very interesting. It highlights the dangers and darker parts of the world and emphasizes the sadness and negativity of adulthood. 

I liked how the poems rhymed (I know, this is such a basic thing to say) because it made it easier and faster to get through. It also made it less likely for me to fall asleep out of boredom (I'm just being real) like I usually do when I read poetry. A lot of the poems in the second half were more interesting to me, because they seemed more realistic and focused on the deeper parts of life. 

Some of the poems were definitely more interesting than the others. Since none of them necessarily had to be read in order, I found it easier to be able to focus on what I was reading even if I happened to miss something in the audiobook recording. I had to read some other poetry for this class that was more prose written in poetry form in one long book, and that was definitely much harder to follow than these. These were cute and light, even though some focused on darker topics, and I ended up finding my personal experience reading these quite endearing. 

I'd recommend trying this set of poems out if you're trying to read more poetry but don't want to read some epic. It's a fun set and easy to follow. Definitely try out the audiobook if you want because the free one on Spotify is really good!

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Poetry Elements: This is a book of poems.