Sorry, I accidentally forgot to blog about a poem for November!
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A Poison Tree

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.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

William Blake

For my poem this week, I decided to go with the “Poison Tree” by William Blake because I had a friend, Kate Sadeski, who wrote a short story (in my Lit Mag class) with the same themed idea; they used words like foe, wrath, fear, deceit, etc to center their piece. Blake and Kate use negative emotions/feelings/etc as beings to elaborate on how pure the soul truly is when humans are first made. He says in the first stanza, introducing wrath as a being with life-like movements, “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”. Blake’s choice on diction brings a mirrored idea into the poem about how the evils inside us are the evils themselves. For example, it is not him who is truly evil, it his wrath and his idea of foe, etc that make him evil. In the second stanza, he elaborates on how he encouraged these beings to grow inside of him by “watered it in fears” and “with my tears”. He means to say that their presence in his life was his fault, by allowing them to take him over and tempt him.

He is also brings in key symbols to add to this point, like “apple” and “beneath the tree”, to show a sign that he was manipulated and tricked. He turned so easily mad and sad that he “till it bore an apple bright” and created/indulged in sin. In the bible, the foe was “satan” or the snake, that was beneath the tree, alike to his words in the last stanza. In the end, he is saying that he was so awfully depressed and easily manipulated that he committed bad acts/sins.

This poem is extremely interesting because of Blake’s closeness to the dark arts and the negative connotations to things like wrath and fear. To somebody biblical, this could be seen as the main point of view being hosted by satanic parasites that are slowly intoxicating him, but to somebody alike to Blake they would realize how Blake’s main point of view has a relationship with the darkness. Blake’s tone can change depending on who is reading it. Blake though favors the darker heavens, generally, rather than the angelic heavens because he believes the darker heavens are more true, and that the angelic heavens are deceiving.