{"id":207,"date":"2023-02-17T23:04:30","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T23:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=207"},"modified":"2023-02-17T23:04:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T23:04:30","slug":"limon-and-blake-similar-ideals-hundreds-of-years-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/17\/limon-and-blake-similar-ideals-hundreds-of-years-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"Lim\u00f3n and Blake: Similar ideals, hundreds of years apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who gets to look? Ada Lim\u00f3n would say that anyone who wishes to look, can, and should look. This act of looking is the primary role of a tourist, an onlooker full of interest, attention, and appreciation. Tourists travel from place to place, looking at countries, streams, oceans, castles, churches, ruins. Most importantly, tourists, whether literal or metaphorical, look at life, acknowledge life, and savor the act of being, and what has been. During her Dickinson Stellfox residency, Lim\u00f3n noted that she was most interested and inspired by the fact that we live, and we die.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This same inspiration is exceedingly apparent in William Blake’s work, specifically in his poem <\/span>The Fly<\/span><\/i>. The speaker of the poem views the fly\u2019s life from an outside perspective, as someone whose \u201cThoughtless hand\/ has brushed away\u201d (3-4) the fly; but also sees the fly from a very familiar perspective. The speaker realizes that both live and both die, making them quite similar in a very simplistic way. They take note of the little things like the fly itself, but doesnt see the fly as small. Instead the fly is viewed simply: as a living being who experiences high and low points in life just like humans do (even if its ultimate low point is being brushed away.) When viewing life in this way there is no gender, and there is no class. There is only the simple act of being alive. With no confinements or definitions, and only viewing life, being watchful, and being a tourist or watcher who thinks, lives, and is interested and appreciates their being, as well as the fly\u2019s. \u201cAm not I\/ A fly like thee? \/ Or art not thou \/\u00a0 A man like me?\u201d (5-8) efficiently equates man to fly, and suggests that even the \u201clittle fly\u201d (1) is capable of this appreciation and experience of a good life, just like the speaker and just like Ada Lim\u00f3n\u2019s ideas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both poets share a similar appreciation for intersections between nature and mankind, as well as the simplicity in life itself. Being mindful, stopping to think, to look, to watch, or listen, was the advice of United State\u2019s 24th poet laureate, Ada Lim\u00f3n. Her words, alongside Blake\u2019s, suggest that there is a certain greatness in taking a moment to be a tourist, who is simply watching and exploring life. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who gets to look? Ada Lim\u00f3n would say that anyone who wishes to look, can, and should look. This act of looking is the primary role of a tourist, an onlooker full of interest, attention, and appreciation. Tourists travel from place to place, looking at countries, streams, oceans, castles, churches, ruins. Most importantly, tourists, whether … Continue reading Lim\u00f3n and Blake: Similar ideals, hundreds of years apart<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}