[split] Blake discussion

[busker]

And how dare you say Blake is anything but a genius! If it weren't for Blake life would be unbearable. :*

His 'songs' are part of the collective unconscious or subconscious or what have you. I find myself reciting 'The Fly' and 'The Rose' from time to time. Genuinely brilliant. But his longer poems are unreadable, like the versified ramblings of a Christian Mehdi Hasan. That's why he had to include pictures of naked people in them, to give the reader something to do on the Omnibus...

[Exit]

And how dare you say Blake is anything but a genius! If it weren't for Blake life would be unbearable. :*

His 'songs' are part of the collective unconscious or subconscious or what have you. I find myself reciting 'The Fly' and 'The Rose' from time to time. Genuinely brilliant. But his longer poems are unreadable, like the versified ramblings of a Christian Mehdi Hasan. That's why he had to include pictures of naked people in them, to give the reader something to do on the Omnibus...

Yeah when your shitty poems are still being refered to after 250 years I think Blake will take it on the chin.

[busker]

And how dare you say Blake is anything but a genius! If it weren't for Blake life would be unbearable. :*

His 'songs' are part of the collective unconscious or subconscious or what have you. I find myself reciting 'The Fly' and 'The Rose' from time to time. Genuinely brilliant. But his longer poems are unreadable, like the versified ramblings of a Christian Mehdi Hasan. That's why he had to include pictures of naked people in them, to give the reader something to do on the Omnibus...

Yeah when your shitty poems are still being refered to after 250 years I think Blake will take it on the chin.

By that yardstick, Arthur Conan Doyle must be the pre-eminent Victorian literary figure, ahead of Browning or Hopkins...

[Exit]

His 'songs' are part of the collective unconscious or subconscious or what have you. I find myself reciting 'The Fly' and 'The Rose' from time to time. Genuinely brilliant. But his longer poems are unreadable, like the versified ramblings of a Christian Mehdi Hasan. That's why he had to include pictures of naked people in them, to give the reader something to do on the Omnibus...

Yeah when your shitty poems are still being refered to after 250 years I think Blake will take it on the chin.

By that yardstick, Arthur Conan Doyle must be the pre-eminent Victorian literary figure, ahead of Browning or Hopkins...

Oh come on, saying Blake is just historical... how edgy :d Without Blake we'd be all sucking our thumbs. And to reduce his paintings to "pictures"? Well, you write anything half as good and paint anything half as good and I'll defer to your genius. But from what I've read of you it's mediocre at best. And you can have an opinion. but it's wrong.

[busker]

Yeah when your shitty poems are still being refered to after 250 years I think Blake will take it on the chin.

By that yardstick, Arthur Conan Doyle must be the pre-eminent Victorian literary figure, ahead of Browning or Hopkins...

Oh come on, saying Blake is just historical... how edgy :d Without Blake we'd be all sucking our thumbs. And to reduce his paintings to "pictures"? Well, you write anything half as good and paint anything half as good and I'll defer to your genius. But from what I've read of you it's mediocre at best. And you can have an opinion. but it's wrong.

Please explain how the text below is a poem that someone in our day and age can't pastiche.
Let me expound further: you can't pastiche Milton for long. If you do, it becomes high quality poetry. You can't pastiche much of Keats or Tennyson because their craft was at a high level. You can pastiche Shelley, of course, because 90% of what he wrote was rhyming 'mountain' with 'fountain', and you can pastiche Shakespeare because he just made shit up. You can't pastiche Wodehouse. You can't pastiche Dostoevsky, even in translation. Or Chekhov. Or Martin Amiss. Or TS Eliot. You can't pastiche the Psalms or the Book of Job. If you do, then it all becomes quality work in its own right.
But you can pastiche this:

Rintrah roars, and shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

To clarify: I'm not saying that all of Blake is like the above. His 'Songs' are at the highest level.

Wordsworth, on the other hand...

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Blake painted well, but the average mural artist in Australia today is a better craftsman..:also has better tools, of course

[Exit]

By that yardstick, Arthur Conan Doyle must be the pre-eminent Victorian literary figure, ahead of Browning or Hopkins...

Oh come on, saying Blake is just historical... how edgy :d Without Blake we'd be all sucking our thumbs. And to reduce his paintings to "pictures"? Well, you write anything half as good and paint anything half as good and I'll defer to your genius. But from what I've read of you it's mediocre at best. And you can have an opinion. but it's wrong.

Please explain how the text below is a poem that someone in our day and age can't pastiche.
Let me expound further: you can't pastiche Milton for long. If you do, it becomes high quality poetry. You can't pastiche much of Keats or Tennyson because their craft was at a high level. You can pastiche Shelley, of course, because 90% of what he wrote was rhyming 'mountain' with 'fountain', and you can pastiche Shakespeare because he just made shit up. You can't pastiche Wodehouse. You can't pastiche Dostoevsky, even in translation. Or Chekhov. Or Martin Amiss. Or TS Eliot. You can't pastiche the Psalms or the Book of Job. If you do, then it all becomes quality work in its own right.
But you can pastiche this:

Rintrah roars, and shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

To clarify: I'm not saying that all of Blake is like the above. His 'Songs' are at the highest level.

Wordsworth, on the other hand...

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Blake painted well, but the average mural artist in Australia today is a better craftsman..:also has better tools, of course

I genuinely don't know what you are talking about. If your bar for great art is whether or not it can be imitated (to varying degrees of competence—and newer ones are better) then we are working from very different hymn sheets. 



this is fucking brilliant. it doesn't mean Jimi isn't.



dylan's better than both of them

[busker]

I'm not a musician. But even then, the only thing that Dylan could do was play the harmonica and the guitar, and sort of sing at the same time. The cover versions of his songs are all better than the originals. So it means that his skill lay primarily in song writing.
Then I look at 'Fourth time around' and wonder if, like John Lennon, he's merely the product of Anglo-American boomer navel gazing.....

[rowens]

I'm not a musician. But even then, the only thing that Dylan could do was play the harmonica and the guitar, and sort of sing at the same time. The cover versions of his songs are all better than the originals. So it means that his skill lay primarily in song writing.
Then I look at 'Fourth time around' and wonder if, like John Lennon, he's merely the product of Anglo-American boomer navel gazing.....

There are no lyrics. Despite the typical false advertisement. That's reality. Let's call it, Me and Emily Jane.   

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busker, if you dig Bon Jovi and Air Supply, and you're a singer, you are a musician. Be it only your voice. Live in the now. Like Garth in Wayne's World said.

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Well, there are lyrics. Heehaw.

[Exit]

I'm not a musician. But even then, the only thing that Dylan could do was play the harmonica and the guitar, and sort of sing at the same time. The cover versions of his songs are all better than the originals. So it means that his skill lay primarily in song writing.
Then I look at 'Fourth time around' and wonder if, like John Lennon, he's merely the product of Anglo-American boomer navel gazing.....

There isn't a single cover version of a Dylan song that is better than the original. Not even Brian Ferry's album "Dylanesque" comes close—which hurts me to say, of course. But your obvious lack of musical taste aside, I still don't get your point that if something can be imitated the quality of the original thing is by default diminished. Or, even, that the imitation is by default better than the original. In fact, I would posit the opposite and suggest that imitation is always and naturally inferior to the original. It's only the inspiration one derives from original art that may, hopefully, lead to original art. And I don't see how Guernica being easily imitated (anyone with a canvas and black and white oil paints could give a good stab at it) makes it any less brilliant. Basquiat was inspired by Picasso and yet they both paint beautifully, and originally, and I'd be hard-pressed to decide which I'd want on my wall more. Which is why I have both. 



and Dylan wrote 4th Time Around to take the piss out of Lennon



and then Lennon wrote I am the Walrus to take the piss out of Dylan...



and they're all fucking brilliant

[busker]

^^ yes, FTA was written in response to NW. That was my point.
It also happens to be one of the highlights of Blonde on Blonde, and makes up for much of Dylan’s caterwauling. Pity that it’s a joke in the end.
Same with Sun King on Abbey Road. The best song, and a joke.
So their regular work is pedestrian and their best work parody. 

Back to the topic:
The point is not that what can be imitated is of less value, but rather that if something is easy to replicate faithfully, it by definition requires less skill and therefore is of low value.

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Much of Blake is the latter

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Also, if you think that Jim Morrison was a 'poet', then you've drunk too deeply from the well of American cultural marketing industry.