A prose poem by Poet Blogger Makena Behnke
does human nature like to be trapped? do you, specifically, like to be trapped? you always go on about liberation and being free. but, you were the one who trapped yourself in that stupid box in the first place. i think you wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t looking for a way out. you’re always griping about how everything sucks and how your life is terrible. if you unleash yourself from your own restraints, you would be so much happier, you would enjoy life. what would you do if you were content? how would you handle yourself? who would you be if you weren’t stuck in that box?
Editor: Luke Langlois
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
— from “London” by English poet William Blake
“The Mind-Forg’d Manacles”
William Blake (1757-1827) expressed his belief in the importance of the imagination by attacking what he called the “mind-forg’d manacles.” (Manacles = chains, shackles.)
Unimaginative thought imposes shackles on the human spirit. Blake believed that the outside, sensory world has no inherent meaning, but becomes meaningful through the contributions of the human imagination, thus his stance that reality is a construction of the human mind. Humans bring meaning to nature in the form of imaginative thought. However, Blake recognized the limitations that humans often place on themselves , limitations that are inflicted by the human mind. Self-imposed social and intellectual restrictions deprive humans of experiencing nature and the true human spirit. The “mind-forg’d manacles” represent Blake’s perception of self-limitation and the denigration of the human imagination.
Blake explores this idea of self-limitation in his poems entitled Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake first creates a world of innocence where the inhabitants are child-like and are completely accepting of knowledge without any concern for truth or meaning. He then progresses to the world of experience where nature has been abandoned and evil prevails as a result.
— from “The Mind-Forg’d Manacles of Blake’s Poetry” by Elizabeth Whitney, University of Houston
“mind-forged manacles”………… fabulous imagery….. meaningFULL ! ….. profound.
“oh what a tangled web we weave…”