But the actual poetic discovery that came to me in London did not concern a living poet, but an artist who at that time was very much forgotten – William Blake, that lonely and problematical genius who, with his mixture of helplessness and sublime perfection, still fascinates me. A friend had advised me to look at the books illustrated in color in the Print Room of the British Museum, which was then directed by Laurence Binyon, “Europe,” “America,” and “The Book of Job,” which, today, have become the great rarities at the dealers, and I was enchanted. Here for the first time I saw one of those
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