"This Visible Worm", the "William/Willie challenge":

THIS VISIBLE WORM 

 My “William/Willie challenge”

 Some years ago I watched the movie, “Dangerous Minds,” centring on a dedicated high school teacher played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She initiated a “Dylan/Dylan challenge for her students. They were to find poems/lyrics by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan which had the same theme. 

It turned out that each poet had written a work urging a bold, confrontational attitude to death. Bob Dylan wrote:  “...I will not carry myself down to die./When I go to my grave, my head will be high.” 

Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” 

 The idea of finding a connection between two poets from different eras and intrigued me, so I invented a similar challenge for myself, the “William/Willie” challenge. “William” is the English poet William Blake (1757-1827), whose books, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience struck a chord with me. As a student of English literature (B.A., 1993, University of Waterloo, 1993) and as a former history student (M.A, Queen’s, 1973) I knew a fair bit about the milieu in which he wrote, a time of social unrest. 

Slavery was hotly debated and in 1807 Britain abolished the slave trade. (Slave ownership, however, was not abolished until 1834.) Enclosure of common lands was going on in England of Blake’s day. The industrial revolution was beginning, leading to severe exploitation of factory workers, including children. The American and French revolutions called for an end to autocratic monarchies, in favour of liberty and equality. The British government clamped down on any revolutionary tendencies, and Blake got in trouble with the law. 

 Blake’s social conscience and the multi-layered meanings in his rhymed, metered verses, intrigued me. In his own time he was known primarily as an engraver; his poetry was forgotten until the 1860s, and was not fully appreciated until the 20th century. He was the first of the Romantic poets, whose movement celebrates nature, emotion and rebellion against oppressive institutions. 

 I chose as my other “William”, the American singer\songwriter Willie Nelson

 (b. 1933) because like Blake, he is an anti-establishment figure. Like Blake, he is prolific, having written more than 2,500 songs for himself and others to record. As part of the “outlaw” movement in country music, he rebelled against the Nashville establishment, which had established norms for musical styles, dress and behaviour through such institutions as the Grand Ole Opry. 

 Both use simple language and write rhymed lyrics. The line in one of Willie’s songs, the line,“There ain’t nothing sweeter than naked emotion,” makes clear his romanticism. My poem, “This Visible Worm,” is a homage to William and Willie:

 This Visible Worm 

She isn't the ramblin' kind, 

but a bloom from a pretty rose tree, 

and she gave all her love to this visible worm

 and made a good man out of me. 

The first time I saw her sweet face, 

I felt clean and as pure as a lamb, 

yet strong as a tyger and brave as a sweep,

 for she made me the man that I am. 

To buy her the things that she needs, 

I'll work graveyard shift at the mill. 

No matter how dark and satanic the toil, 

I'll all of her wishes fulfill. 

 And on our days off we will stroll

 through the echoing woods hand in hand. 

Our songs we'll combine in the sweet Georgia pine, 

A pleasant and green forest land. 

 © Ruth Latta, 2008, 2024 First published in Magma Poetry, London UK, Issue 25)

 Readers familiar with William Blake’s poetry will recognize that the phrase “visible worm” comes from “The Sick Rose,” which says, essentially, that pleasure in love is tainted by social attitudes. 

 O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, 

 That flies in the night in the  howling storm

Has found out thy bed off crimson joy:

And his dark secret love does thy life destroy. 

 “My Pretty Rose Tree,” another phrase in my poem, is the title of a Blake poem on the value of fidelity and the destructiveness of jealousy. The lamb (“Little lamb, who made thee?); the tyger” (“Tyger, tyger, burning bright”) and the sweep (“The Chimney Sweeper ") all come from Blake’s Songs. 

 The references in my last two verses come from his famous poem “Jerusalem.” which Sir Hubert Parry set to music in 1919. From this hymn, which calls on us to act boldly in striving for social justice and a heaven on earth, I borrowed “dark Satanic mills”, and “green and pleasant land”: 

 “I will not cease from Mental Fight,/ Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand 

 Till we have built Jerusalem/In England's green and pleasant Land."

 The rose motif, which Blake liked, can also be found in many Willie Nelson songs, such as “My Love for the Rose” from the album “Tougher than Leather.” His recent song, “First Rose of Spring,” from the album of the same name, begins:

 “The first time that he saw her/He knew everything had changed 

Overnight, love started blooming/Like the first rose of spring.”

 Though Willie didn’t write the well-known “Ramblin’ Rose”, the “ramblin’” in the first line of my poem is there to signal “country song.” “Georgia pines” are from “We Had it All.”

 Recently, “This Visible Worm” won honourable mention in a contest for a poem on the theme of a movie, play, book or song title. I was lucky to win anything at all, as the rules required that the title of the original movie, etc. had to appear as the title of my poem, or somewhere in its body, or in the epigraph.

 “The Pretty Rose Tree,” the title of one of Blake’s Songs of Experience, is in my the second line as “a pretty rose tree,” but - oops - I changed the article. Also, the judges probably didn’t recognize it as a “song title.” I probably erred, too, in blending references to two artists’ bodies of work instead of sticking to just one song. 

 Still, my self-imposed challenge was fun, and “This Visible Worm” is my favourite among all my poems. I recommend a knowledge of Blake’s work to anyone who aspires to write poetry. He shows us how one well-chosen word can resonate and open a reader’s eyes. A true wordsmith should be eager to puzzle out the different levels of meaning, and perhaps try to achieve something similar. Both he and Willie Nelson are worthy of aspiring poets’ attention.