My business is to create : Blake's infinite writing / Eric G. Wilson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Be an artist -- Contraries -- The ratio -- Minute particulars -- Looking -- Copy a great deal -- The infernal method -- Poetry unfetter'd -- Revising -- Innocence -- Play -- Experience -- Generation -- The fly -- Spiritual warfare -- Work -- Eternity -- Dictation -- The fourfold -- Infinite writing.

This book examines William Blake's theory of creativity as well as the practices it implies. In both his life and his art, Blake provided an example of creativity at any cost- in the face of misunderstanding, neglect, loneliness, poverty, even accusations of insanity. Generations of writers and artists as diverse as John Ruskin, William Butler Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Philip K. Dick, songwriter Patti Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and the underground comic-book artist R. Crumb have taken Blake's creed as inspiration. Unwilling to cede his vision, Blake did more than simply produce iconoclastic poems and paintings; he also cleared a path toward spiritual and ethical enlightenment.