To my ear, every line unambiguously has two *beats*. One has to distinguish between stresses and beats (the occurrence of some heavy offbeats between the beats is actually quite common in anapestic meter. Come to that, this poem opens on a spondee).
Great post and I’m glad you talk about the sound of it. I frequently began my first class of the semester with a close reading of this, line by line. It delivers.
The innocent (or naive) reading I always took away of The Sick Rose is that it's a good poem about a rose that was sickened when a worm invaded its heart, which might be as you said an "intimation of mortality," but not an intimation of immorality. The other suggested readings seem to me to be objectionably Freudian pseudo-psychoanalytical of the type of "I'll tell you what you really mean, William Blake, since I know better than you from reading Freud that everything we do and every motive we have points back to sex." I especially hate the interpretation of the young girl's fantasies. Ew.
I always think of Julie Walters reciting this poem, as a climactic moment in the film version of Educating Rita --- the moment when her hairdresser character already knows what the Open University tutor (Michael Caine) thinks he's going to teach her.
Jul 15·edited Jul 15Liked by Sally Thomas, Joseph Bottum
This poem has special significance for me just from the aspect of reading poetry. I had very narrow tastes in literature, and especially poetry, in school, but I loved classical music. Starting about 18 I started listening compulsively to art songs, and that ended up truly opening my ear to poetry--Berlioz, Barber, Britten, Brahms, and even some not beginning with B. And this was one of the first of those, in Britten's setting of it as "Elegy" in his Serenade. I've never bothered overmuch what it might mean, because when I read it I always hear Peter Pears singing it instead, and that's enough for me. (And sometimes I am also reminded of Michael Nyman's chamber opera "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," where it is used to good effect, and then I do think what it might mean. I was listening to some pretty odd stuff then, and I still like it all.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lis4YvLdoc
Thinking about this, I realized again that the use of this poem in Nyman's opera is quite interesting. The opera was based on the respective case in Oliver Sacks' book of the same name, of course, in which a music professor begins failing to recognize people (ultimately it turned out that he was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's). The second half of the opera is essentially a neurological examination; at one point the professor fails to recognize a rose until he smells it, and his wife, who is slowly realizing the seriousness of his agnosia, sings that poem; the poem has nothing to do with sex in this context and everything to do with loss and destruction. --More generally, it's one of Nyman's better works, in great part because his magpie acquisition of so many shiny tidbits by other composers and artists succeeds well in it; often this results in a fairly empty eclecticism, but in the context of three highly educated characters searching for the truth, it is effective. (The music is drawn heavily from Schumann, and Heine's "Ich Grolle Nicht," which Schumann set in Dicherliebe and which the professor and the neurologist sing together at the midpoint of the opera, go well with the Blake--Blake sees a devouring worm, Heine the serpent devouring the heart of his beloved, both suitable symbols for Alzheimer's, though in the context of the opera a symbol of loss of the self and of one's loved one.) There was a TV production of it with slight cuts and a couple of neurological disquisitions that's up on YouTube for anyone interested; the Blake is sung starting at 43:14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r1YpNP0Z9I
Thanks for sharing the link. When I was younger, I did a better job of responding whole-souled to poems, and not merely intellectually. Then I hated answering "the questions at the end of the chapter," the normal assignment after reading a short piece.
It is interesting to me to consider the many different ways one can interpret a piece of literature or poetry in this case. We bring our own thoughts and experiences to bear in our desire to find the "correct" interpretation or "the one the author intended" when really, once the work is published, it will speak to the readers differently because they will all come to it with different experiences and expectations. If the author does not make his intentions clear enough, it is ours to decide what the interpretation should be.
I greatly enjoy considering the different interpretations and the reasoning for them. Perhaps that aspect of poetry and literature in addition to the author's actual words, helps us to understand our humanity just a little bit better.
I've understood the poem as representing a secret, obsessive love that eats away at the soul, an experience I know for myself. It's not unlike a few people I know who've remained secluded well after the end of the pandemic feasting their heart on political rancor--though, unfortunately for us, they do not keep it to themselves.
I suppose my reading is affected by my understanding of "The Poison Tree" by Blake: "I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow."
Thank you for posting this; I love this short poem, so much in so few lines! I also opt for the literal: on my porch, the petunias are infiltrated by worms. How on earth did they get there? The worm as sex reading seems darkest to me; in Christian marriage sex should be life-giving, no destroying worm. Sex is dark when forbidden (disordered) and yet desired. If Blake is really against Christian morality, then I am misreading his poems even as I enjoy them. The worm as death reading weirdly seems less dark, and death attacks every flower...
Interesting reading. When I did my A levels, all the critics I can remember it said it was about sex. The whole songs of innocence of experience was about sex. I think they used the illustrations from the original.
To my ear, every line unambiguously has two *beats*. One has to distinguish between stresses and beats (the occurrence of some heavy offbeats between the beats is actually quite common in anapestic meter. Come to that, this poem opens on a spondee).
As to the poem’s meaning, there’s some well researched context provided by this fascinating article: https://bq.blakearchive.org/26.1.srigley#ref-n7
Great post and I’m glad you talk about the sound of it. I frequently began my first class of the semester with a close reading of this, line by line. It delivers.
The innocent (or naive) reading I always took away of The Sick Rose is that it's a good poem about a rose that was sickened when a worm invaded its heart, which might be as you said an "intimation of mortality," but not an intimation of immorality. The other suggested readings seem to me to be objectionably Freudian pseudo-psychoanalytical of the type of "I'll tell you what you really mean, William Blake, since I know better than you from reading Freud that everything we do and every motive we have points back to sex." I especially hate the interpretation of the young girl's fantasies. Ew.
I always think of Julie Walters reciting this poem, as a climactic moment in the film version of Educating Rita --- the moment when her hairdresser character already knows what the Open University tutor (Michael Caine) thinks he's going to teach her.
I didn't notice that.
This poem has special significance for me just from the aspect of reading poetry. I had very narrow tastes in literature, and especially poetry, in school, but I loved classical music. Starting about 18 I started listening compulsively to art songs, and that ended up truly opening my ear to poetry--Berlioz, Barber, Britten, Brahms, and even some not beginning with B. And this was one of the first of those, in Britten's setting of it as "Elegy" in his Serenade. I've never bothered overmuch what it might mean, because when I read it I always hear Peter Pears singing it instead, and that's enough for me. (And sometimes I am also reminded of Michael Nyman's chamber opera "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," where it is used to good effect, and then I do think what it might mean. I was listening to some pretty odd stuff then, and I still like it all.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lis4YvLdoc
Thank you for sharing this!
Yes! I cannot read this poem without hearing the voice of the wonderful Peter Pears.
Thinking about this, I realized again that the use of this poem in Nyman's opera is quite interesting. The opera was based on the respective case in Oliver Sacks' book of the same name, of course, in which a music professor begins failing to recognize people (ultimately it turned out that he was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's). The second half of the opera is essentially a neurological examination; at one point the professor fails to recognize a rose until he smells it, and his wife, who is slowly realizing the seriousness of his agnosia, sings that poem; the poem has nothing to do with sex in this context and everything to do with loss and destruction. --More generally, it's one of Nyman's better works, in great part because his magpie acquisition of so many shiny tidbits by other composers and artists succeeds well in it; often this results in a fairly empty eclecticism, but in the context of three highly educated characters searching for the truth, it is effective. (The music is drawn heavily from Schumann, and Heine's "Ich Grolle Nicht," which Schumann set in Dicherliebe and which the professor and the neurologist sing together at the midpoint of the opera, go well with the Blake--Blake sees a devouring worm, Heine the serpent devouring the heart of his beloved, both suitable symbols for Alzheimer's, though in the context of the opera a symbol of loss of the self and of one's loved one.) There was a TV production of it with slight cuts and a couple of neurological disquisitions that's up on YouTube for anyone interested; the Blake is sung starting at 43:14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r1YpNP0Z9I
Thanks for sharing the link. When I was younger, I did a better job of responding whole-souled to poems, and not merely intellectually. Then I hated answering "the questions at the end of the chapter," the normal assignment after reading a short piece.
It is interesting to me to consider the many different ways one can interpret a piece of literature or poetry in this case. We bring our own thoughts and experiences to bear in our desire to find the "correct" interpretation or "the one the author intended" when really, once the work is published, it will speak to the readers differently because they will all come to it with different experiences and expectations. If the author does not make his intentions clear enough, it is ours to decide what the interpretation should be.
I greatly enjoy considering the different interpretations and the reasoning for them. Perhaps that aspect of poetry and literature in addition to the author's actual words, helps us to understand our humanity just a little bit better.
I've understood the poem as representing a secret, obsessive love that eats away at the soul, an experience I know for myself. It's not unlike a few people I know who've remained secluded well after the end of the pandemic feasting their heart on political rancor--though, unfortunately for us, they do not keep it to themselves.
I suppose my reading is affected by my understanding of "The Poison Tree" by Blake: "I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow."
Thank you for posting this; I love this short poem, so much in so few lines! I also opt for the literal: on my porch, the petunias are infiltrated by worms. How on earth did they get there? The worm as sex reading seems darkest to me; in Christian marriage sex should be life-giving, no destroying worm. Sex is dark when forbidden (disordered) and yet desired. If Blake is really against Christian morality, then I am misreading his poems even as I enjoy them. The worm as death reading weirdly seems less dark, and death attacks every flower...
Interesting reading. When I did my A levels, all the critics I can remember it said it was about sex. The whole songs of innocence of experience was about sex. I think they used the illustrations from the original.