What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our third series, The Poems of Others II, twenty-four poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
from the book THE COMPLETE POETRY AND PROSE OF WILLIAM BLAKE/ Anchor Books
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Cover of William Blake's Complete Poetry and Prose
What Sparks Poetry:
Mathias Svalina on William Blake's "The Tyger"

"Maybe my dedication to poetry....this desire to manufacture transcendences out of words, is just chasing this first high of visionary realization & its predicating brain chemistry. One moment you can be a child in a classroom, terrified & trapped, & then you read the right words, & you are free. It’s true. Freedom is real. Art is true. And once you know a true thing, it is difficult to un-know."
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Cover of Gillian Conoly's book, A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New & Selected Poems

John Yau and Albert Mobilio choose their poetry collections of the year. "There have been more fine books published this year than we can adequately cite. For this list, we mostly chose standouts from longstanding careers—our tip of the hat to perseverance."

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