A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travellers is Nancy Willard's poetic tribute to the poet, William Blake. What if William Blake owned and ran an inn for travelers? How would such an inn look? What kinds of voyagers would it attract?
Blake's inn is no ordinary landmark. Its inhabitants include two mighty baking dragons, two patient laundering angels, William Blake himself, and the cornucopia of visitors which season the pages. "Blake's Celestial Limousine" takes travelers to and fro, while a rabbit shows the little boy who is visiting to his room. Other memorable characters include the excitable King of Cats, the dreamy Wise Cow, the chatty sunflowers, the story-craving Tiger, and my personal favorite, the Man in the Marmalade Hat.
Alice and Martin Provensen's award-winning illustrations bring out the whimsy in Willard's imaginary voyage. In a gentle way, the illustrations also pay tribute to Blake's penchant for illustrating some of his poems in a fantastic manner.
THE WISE COW ENJOYS A CLOUD
"Where did you sleep last night, Wise Cow?
Where did you lay your head?"
"I caught my horns on a rolling cloud
and made myself a bed,
and in the morning ate it raw
on freshly buttered bread."
The book ends on a note worth sharing with every child. We used it as a journal prompt for Max's journaling today. His head was abuzz with all sorts of fantasies after we polished off this tasty book; itching to journal, ready to write, the words come to him like pigeons in the park nowadays....
Chasing butterflies:
- Listen to the delightful pieces composed by Dale Lyles for each poem in this book. We listened to each as we read the various poems and tried to describe what the music revealed about the poems.
- A Blake-illustrated version of "The Tyger", one of the poems penned by Blake which inspired this book (Finish the Book).
- Images and a few poem pages (The Marlowe Bookshelf).
- More images from the book (Masha du Toit).
- Blake's illustrated version of his poem, "Jerusalem" (Counterlight's Peculiars).
- Companion poems with original illustrations from Songs of Innocence and Experience.
- Nancy Willard bio (Poetry Foundation).
- Life of William Blake, an interesting endeavor by Anne Gilchrist.