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octavia_cade 's review for:
Songs of Innocence
by William Blake
Colour facsimile editions like this are really the best way to read Blake, I think. You lose so much with conventional print on a page in comparison - his art and poems are so intertwined that it's hard to get the flavour of them out of simple transcription. That being said, this isn't my favourite of his books. The poems are designedly saccharine, and the art is watered down to match. (It certainly doesn't approach the vivid and unforgettable illustrations of his Book of Urizen for instance.) In fairness, he's chosen a difficult subject. Sweet little children prancing through fields of blossom and lying down with lions and so forth, and though it's occasionally leavened with less treacly concerns such as racism and child labour, it's still not very less, with the remedy being basically "Put up with it and you'll get your reward in heaven." But then innocence is very far from justice and judgement...