Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Eric G Wilson, part of the Iowa Series in Creativity and Writing.

In My Business Is to Create, Eric G. Wilson provides a score of linked meditations on the creative process, homilies on the work and works of William Blake. The result is a slender but inspiring book in which the contraries of writing and criticism, interpretation and creation, are brought into fruitful coincidence.

Each of the essays in the volume highlights anecdotes and apposite quotes from other writers, from Nietzsche to Adrienne Rich, to the point where sometimes it seemed like there were too many voices in play. Wilson’s view of Blake seems to be a robust one, and while it is certainly informed by extensive familiarity with other readers of Blake, it didn’t seem to need the intrusion of further “authorities,” especially given the personal and reflective tone of the study. 

My Business Is to Create contains numerous biographical passages, and it should be enjoyable as an introduction to Blake, as well as a reflection on his ideas about creativity and vision, and counsel to writers and other artists about how to put those ideas into play.