Happy Year of the Tiger! Or, Tyger, as it were…

I like to participate in the New Year Poem Postcard Project spearheaded by Jone Rush MacCulloch, one of my dear poetry friends. Several of us Poetry Friday folks, or poetry minded folks, swap postcards in the mail to jumpstart the year. These are usually lovely and inspiring. I got a wild hair this year and decided to toss in a chuckle, with this play on “The Tyger” by William Blake (1757 – 1827):
©

Poet Poet, burning bright

In the blue computer light

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful syntax-y?

…

Did he who made Iambs make thee?

©Robyn Hood Black, after, and with apologies to, William Blake

I sketched the tiger in pen and ink, but filled in the fur with snippets from
Blake’s draft of “The Tyger” from one of his notebooks  (copied from a reproduction in Peter Ackroyd’s book, BLAKE).  Lucky for me, there were lots of heavy black scratch-outs!

To see the poetry postcards I received and for links to and about Blake’s poem, click here for my author blog post.

Wishing you a wild and poetic 2022!