Is it possible to distinguish `mystical' or `visionary' poetry from poetry as such? The passage of Blake's prose from which Brian Keeble takes his title suggests that it may not be. `Poetry, Painting, and Music,' Blake wrote, are `the three Powers in Man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not Sweep away.' Blake certainly did not believe that everything in verse or on canvas had spiritual value. But his remark implies that when the arts are doing their proper job, they act as pathways for creator and audience alike to a profound reality - call it `timeless' or `unfallen', `divine' or `archetypal' according to your chosen vocabulary - which transcends the world of our mundane, utilitarian concerns.

Evidently it is, from one point of view, a matter of emphasis. Just as one's mood may be lifted by an unexpected glimpse of beauty or human insight in the midst of the most tedious daily business, so any poet worth the name will on occasion produce a line or stanza of some profundity, refreshing our perceptions and changing our relationship to ourselves and our experience. Certain poets, however, consistently direct attention to the relationship between observed reality and ontological depth in a way that implies ethical as well as aesthetic values, and explicitly take ultimate questions of being, purpose and consciousness as their themes.

One clear intention of Conversing with Paradise is to advocate and interpret such poetry, as well as to give a view ...