"For the Eye Altering Alters All"

When a Blake scholar asked me to speculate on how William Blake might have responded to one of my own poems, I knew immediately that I had stumbled into an assignment that would be both a nightmare and a joy. More to the point, however, no matter how I felt, be it burdened or excited, I knew this essay would be hard to write. Even the simple step of allowing myself to visualize crazy, ardent, single-minded Blake leaning a shoulder against the casement of his small window, the better to cast a scorching eye over my work, is an arduous one. The image seems both absurdly arrogant and deeply humiliating; and whenever I picture that scene, my strongest impulse is to run away. Yet, as I write these words, I'm angry about my craven reaction. "Turn around!" I want to shout. "Sit down! Keep still and listen to the man!" For I recognize that my fears—these public revelations of my weakness and my vanity, of the gaps in my art and my goodness—are exactly what Blake demands from me. He is a terrifying unrelenting master. And yet he is a master. So I choose a poem for Blake to read.

The Fate of Captain Fetterman's Command December 21, 1866

At first light we saw our enemieson the bluffsilver flashing in their hair

a glory of sun as they rode away ladenwith tunics saddles boots arrowsstill piercing the cracked boots

piercing our silent comradesand just visible in the dawnwe saw wolves and coyotes

skulking along the vergecrows buzzards eagles circlingthe sun-spattered meadow

but not one white body was disturbedfor we hear that salt permeatesthe whole system of our race

which protects us from the wildto some degree but it was strangethat nothing had eaten the horses either

except for flies which swarmed in thicklike the stenchall day we waited

till the doctor finished his report thenthey told us to pack our friendsinto the ammunition wagons

this was our job they said to retchto stumble into the field to graspat wrists at ankles dissolving to pulp

under our grip to vomit to weepto stare at masks pounded bloody with stonesbloated crawling with flies who were they

this was our job but we could not sortcavalry from infantry all strippednaked slashed skulls crushed

with war clubs ears noses legshacked off and some hadcrosses cut on their breasts

faces to the skywe walked on their heartsbut did not know it in the high grass

As I steel myself to picture Blake at his window, scowling over this poem, my first thought is to wonder what he would think of its mechanics—punctuation, for instance. I am, in general, priggish about punctuation . . . not like Blake, who appreciates ampersands but otherwise could not care less. In this poem, however, I've dropped my usual sentence tidiers—my commas and periods, my predictable capitalization—a choice that has forced the lines and stanza breaks to shoulder the poem's metric and syntactic load. That technical decision feels brave to me, but it's a bravery that Blake would probably never notice. Nonetheless he would certainly notice that the poem doesn't rhyme or thrust itself into the rhythms of blank verse; and my guess is that he wouldn't much care for the quavering sonic result. But, to tell the truth, I don't much like the sounds of his lines either—neither his pedantic little melodies nor his prosy ranting. We would quarrel. Possibly he would find something cutting to say about literary women, and I would throw up my hands and spill his ink bottle. I wouldn't mean to spill his ink, but I wouldn't be altogether sorry I'd done it either.

Yet, if I can manage to mop up the ink and he can manage to laugh (he does claim to "love laughing"), we may find our way into a common space. For I...