Auguries of Innocence is a poetry collection by Patti Smith, published in 2005. This collection of poetry includes exactly twenty-six recent poems penned by the active, contemporary poet. Drawing on some of her many influences such as William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud, Smith's collection here demonstrates over and over again her knack for detail. Obviously William Blake is a dominant influence on the poet herself, since it shares its title, Auguries of Innocence, with one of William Blake's poems. Upon reviewing both collections it is clearly obvious that both collections share more commonalities than just similar titles. One commonality between this collection and that by Blake's, in regards to the content, is that the poems collected here exhibit subtle nods to the late, great Blake. For example, in one of her poems, The Long Road, by the end of the very first verse the reader has already been exposed to such suggestive visuals as the speaker of the poem sleeping in chimneys and chewing on bulbs, as well as the speaker "sweeping time". Such visuals of Smith's conjure up recollections in the seasoned and experienced reader's mind of Blake's The Chimney Sweeper and The Blossom. While the majority of the twenty-six collected poems have some type of stanza-like arrangement the poet also incorporates several free-verse style poems into the collection, such as Mummer Love, Eve of All Saints, Our Jargon Muffles The Drum, and Written By A Lake.
Famous quotes containing the word innocence:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)