William Blake (printer, engraver, artist, and poet) utilized the highest technology of his time (b.1757--d.1827) to create his multilayerd art. Blake made highly memorable decorated poetry by relief etching. This method uses acid to create valleys in a metal (sometimes copper) plate that produces a raised, or relief, image that can be printed onto paper. This poem, "A Poison Tree," a poem from the Songs of Experience, combines dense text with what W. J. T. Mitchell calls "illustrations which do not illustrate"(112) . The design on this plate combines the text of the poem with a graphic presentation of the narrator's possible "foe" underneath what could be the tree from the title.

This website, with its clickable map and annotated stanzas, attempts to recreate the spirit of Blake's works and methods. By providing both text and image, the reader can enjoy the poem on a higher level than by reading the solitary text in an anthology or collection. Though Blake railed against the abuses of industrialism and the "dark Satanic Mills" (Erdman 95), he did not play the Luddite or the technophobe. This plot of cyberspace devotes itself to a representation of "A Poison Tree" of which a modern Blake would approve. Instead of the analog, physical artifact of the plate, this site provides an electronic, digital reproduction.

The interaction of the user of the website via his or her mouse continues the tradition of the reader's interactivity with the text. Hirsch claims the reader interacts closely with the Songs of Innocence and of Experience because, of all Blake's works, this collection forces upon the reader the "greatest demands" by its "daring simplicities." These demands are not taxing mental ones but "greater imaginative and emotional ones"(43). Thus, the original and computerized versions both draw the reader into a close relation with the plates.

I have tried to give the user of this site as much leeway in exploring as in interpretation. The various parts of the site can be accessed in a multitude of ways. The bibliography and reference sections offers the reader a chance for further resources, the annotations provide links to other poems and interpretations, and the image details allows a closer inspection of Blake's art.