As a person is, so they see. One day the English mystic, poet, and painter William Blake sat down to pen a lively document in defense of the imagination, the inventively eccentric, the artistic spirit. 

Mentioned in this episode: William Blake; Reverend John Trusler; unorthodoxy; Visions of Eternity; Moses; Solomon; Aesop; Homer; Plato; John Keats; Blake's "The Tyger"; Alfred Kazin; living on a dollar a day. 

(All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

This episode is reprised from the ITA archives.

"Do not tread on the heels of your experience," says Henry David Thoreau in this journal entry from July 23, 1851. "Be impressed without making a minute of it." This is an episode from Thoreau's Leaves, our atmospheric podcast devoted to Thoreau's journal (www.thoreausleaves.com). Set out with Henry and see if you can muse again.

Tree swallow sounds by Martin St. Michel, XC179722. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/179722

Music: "Ever I Wander" by Jameson Nathan Jones; "Tranquil" by Danny Pinder

(All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist) 

Atelier Visits take you into the creative workspaces of artists we admire. We're asking writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers to bring you right inside their respective ateliers and share a bit about their process, their creative preoccupations, whatever is on their minds lately. It's an opportunity to spend a little while with various brilliant people who are busy doing good imaginative, artistic work. They'll speak to us directly about what life and creativity is like for them.

Harriet Scott Chessman has published two novels with Atelier26 Books: The Beauty of Ordinary Things and Someone Not Really Her Mother. Her latest novel is The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas. She wrote the libretto for the opera My Lai.

Mentioned in this episode: A room of one's own; woodland vistas; spareness and light; Ikea desks; poetry; haiku; breath; writing librettos; opera; My Lai; The Tempest; justice; the writer's connection to -- and contribution to -- the world.

Music: "Ballerina" by Yehezkel Raz;  "Ever I Wander" by Jameson Nathan Jones; "Afternoon Mist" by Yehezkel Raz

(All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

Success and failure are never cut and dried. Mentioned in this episode: Ralph Waldo Emerson; film editor Walter Murch; "The Conversations" by Michael Ondaatje and Walter Murch; Thomas Edison; Rilke; Paul Zweig. 

Music:  "Escape" by Theevs; "Alter Ego" by LUMINAR; "When I Get There" by Maya Isac 

(All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

Episode reprised from the ITA archives.

There are many reasons -- so many reasons -- for a rubbery deadline. Onward! 

Mentioned in this episode: The Journal of Jules Renard 

Music: "Siren (instrumental)" and "Sugar (instrumental)" by Katrina Stone 

(All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)

Episode reprised from the ITA archives.

The English poet John Keats died unknown to the world at age twenty-five. The odds were against him from the start. Today his poetic mastery is often cited as being second only to Shakespeare. In this episode we look at a letter Keats wrote in 1819, in which he called the world "the vale of Soul-Making." 

Mentioned in this episode: John Keats; Shakespeare; Christianity; Rilke Music: "Another Green World" by Loyla; "Papyrus" by Kyle Preston; "Ballo in Casa Capuleti" by Bottega Baltazar. (All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)

Episode reprised from the ITA archives.