"I am" : the selected poetry of John Clare

Format:

Book

Title:

"I am" : the selected poetry of John Clare

Author:

Clare, John, 1793-1864.

ISBN:

9780374528690

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 317 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

Early poems -- From poems, descriptive of rural life and scenery (1820) -- From the village minstrel, and other poems (1821) -- From the parish -- From the shepherd's calendar (1827) -- From the midsummer cushion -- From the rural muse (1835) -- Poems written at Northborough -- Poems written at the high beach asylum -- Poems and prose written at Northborough, between two asylums -- Poetry written while an inmate of the Northampton general lunatic asylum.

Summary:

""I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare is the first anthology of the remarkable verse of the great "peasant poet" that makes available the full range of his accomplishments."--Jacket.

Subject(s):

Pastoral poetry, English.

Rural conditions -- Poetry.

Country life -- Poetry.

Nature -- Poetry.

Northamptonshire (England) -- Poetry.

England -- Poetry.

Geographic Term:

Northamptonshire (England) -- Poetry.

England -- Poetry.

England

England -- Northamptonshire

Genre:

Added Author:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	821.7 Clare 2003	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Hail, humble Helpstone ...
Where dawning genius never met the day,
Where useless ignorance slumbers life away
Unknown nor heeded, where low genius tries
Above the vulgar and the vain to rise.
--from "Helpstone"

"I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare is the first anthology of the great "peasant poet"'s remarkable verse that makes available the full range of his accomplishments. Here are the different Clares that have beguiled readers for two centuries: the tender chronicler of nature and childhood; the champion of folkways in the face of oppression; the passionate, sweet-tongued love-poet; and the lonely visionary confined, in old age and senility, to asylums.

Author Notes

John Clare (1793-1864) lived all his life in rural Northamptonshire. He is widely celebrated as one of England's great nature and folklife writers
Jonathan Bate is Leverhulme Research Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Though he has steadily furnished anthology pieces, and has been cited repeatedly by John Ashbery as an influence, only recently have scholars and critics, often inspired by Clare's stands on behalf of the poor and by his "green" perspectives on forests and fields, tried to launch him as a major poet. A passionate observer of rural England, and a poet of visionary, even hallucinatory, extremes, Clare (1793-1864) emerged from village poverty to modest success as a "peasant poet" before mental illness confined him to asylums, where he produced works for which there are few points of comparison. Distinguished British academic Bate (whose Clare biography will be published along with this edition) presents the first recent American edition of Clare aimed at nonacademic readers. He draws liberally from Clare's large oeuvre-from long poems, from Clare's most famous prose piece (a record of an eighty-mile foot journey)-and, in a controversial intervention, adds the punctuation, line-breaks and other emendations that Clare had explicitly expected to be part of his printed texts. The results are impressive, though a shorter selection might have made a better case for Clare's greatness: Clare's poems of the 1820s and '30s (the only ones published in books during his lifetime) follow their 18th-century models too closely, and often repeat themselves. Clare's asylum poems, however, sound like nothing else on earth. These include tightly wound cries against isolation and lost love; rigorously attentive descriptions of vulnerable badgers, fragile birds and displaced people; and even energetic long poems that Clare wrote as Lord Byron. Sort through the less-inspired couplets and discover a voice neglected in his lifetime, but impossible to forget once heard. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Bate has made his own chronological selection of Clare's verse, titled after Clare's most famous poem written while institutionalized, to consult before and after as well as while reading his biography, John Clare. --Ray Olson Copyright 2003 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Best remembered for his descriptive nature writings and considered by many "the poet's poet," John Clare (1793-1864) never received recognition as a major Romantic poet. In his lengthy scholarly biography, well-known Shakespeare scholar Bate (The Genius of Shakespeare) draws on letters, journals, poems, and previous biographical accounts to reconstruct the life of this enigmatic working-class English poet. Focusing primarily on Clare's career as a published poet from 1819 to 1835, Bate closely examines Clare's long-term relationship with editor John Taylor, whose heavy hand was instrumental in deciphering Clare's handwriting and correcting his grammar. As Bate reveals, even with the sales of four volumes of poetry and regular financial support from friends and patrons, Clare and his family lived in poverty all their lives. His unhappy marriage, desire to please his politically correct patrons, and drive to produce successful publications caused him immense mental strain. He continued to write poetry during his descent into depression and throughout the 20-plus years he spent in asylums. Bate masterfully points out where data are lacking or misleading. Although some details of the poet's relationship with his wife and children are somewhat glossed over, this long-awaited literary biography effectively fills a void. Appropriate for all academic libraries. "Small joy to him were childhood's tempting tricks,/ Which schoolboys look for in their vacant hours;/ With other boys he little cared to mix;/ Joy left him lonely in his hawthorn bowers." These lines from Clare's largely autobiographical poem, "The Village Minstrel," included in a new collection edited by Bate, reveal not only the protagonist's isolation but Clare's as well. Released this fall simultaneously with Bate's biography of the poet, the collection focuses on Clare's descriptions of rural life, with a few selections on childhood, love, and philosophy. Out of the mass of writing Clare produced during his lifetime, Bate has carefully selected poems from each of his published volumes for this short but concise offering. Included are writings from Clare's earliest days all the way through poems and prose written at the asylums. Clare celebrated nature in most of his writings, as in the poems about bird nesting and in the poem "The Shepherd's Calendar," which chronicles nature's changes during each month of the year. But as this collection discloses, Clare also used his poetry to criticize the wealthy. An excellent introduction to Clare's work, this is appropriate for all libraries.-Jaime Anderson, Henrico Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

John Clare

A Chronology	p. XI
A Note on This Selection	p. XV
Early Poems
To the Fox Fern	p. 3
Schoolboys in Winter	p. 4
To an Infant Sister in Heaven	p. 5
A Moment's Rapture While Bearing the Lovely Weight of A. S--r--s	p. 6
A Ramble	p. 7
Dedication to Mary	p. 9
from Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820)
from Helpstone	p. 15
What is Life?	p. 19
Dawnings of Genius	p. 21
Patty	p. 23
The Primrose	p. 24
The Gypsies' Evening Blaze	p. 25
The River Gwash	p. 26
The Meeting	p. 27
from The Village Minstrel, and Other Poems (1821)
from The Village Minstrel	p. 31
Song ("Swamps of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces")	p. 39
To an Infant Daughter	p. 40
Langley Bush	p. 42
The Last of March (written at Lolham Brigs)	p. 43
To my Cottage	p. 47
In Hilly Wood	p. 48
To Autumn	p. 49
from The Parish
[Miss Peevish Scornful]	p. 53
The Progress of Cant	p. 55
The Overseer	p. 57
from The Shepherd's Calendar (1827)
January	p. 61
from March	p. 74
from May	p. 76
from June	p. 78
from July [manuscript version]	p. 80
from September	p. 82
from October [manuscript draft]	p. 83
from December	p. 86
The Moors	p. 89
from The Midsummer Cushion
Shadows of Taste	p. 95
Childhood	p. 101
The Moorhen's Nest	p. 116
The Progress of Rhyme	p. 120
Remembrances	p. 132
Swordy Well	p. 135
Emmonsails Heath in Winter	p. 136
Love and Memory	p. 137
The Fallen Elm	p. 141
The Landrail	p. 144
Pastoral Poesy	p. 147
The Wren	p. 152
Wood Pictures in Spring	p. 153
The Hollow Tree	p. 154
The Sand Martin	p. 155
from The Rural Muse (1835)
from To the Rural Muse	p. 159
Autumn	p. 163
The Nightingale's Nest	p. 168
The Eternity of Nature	p. 172
Emmonsales Heath	p. 176
Decay: A Ballad	p. 180
The Pettichap's Nest	p. 183
The Yellowhammer's Nest	p. 185
The Skylark	p. 187
First Love's Recollections	p. 189
Summer Moods	p. 192
Evening Schoolboys	p. 193
The Shepherd Boy	p. 194
Lord Byron	p. 195
To the Memory of Bloomfield	p. 196
Beans in Blossom	p. 197
To De Wint	p. 198
Sudden Shower	p. 199
Stepping Stones	p. 200
Pleasant Places	p. 201
On Leaving the Cottage of my Birth	p. 202
Poems Written at Northborough
To the Snipe	p. 207
[The Lament of Swordy Well]	p. 211
Snowstorm	p. 220
Bumbarrel's Nest	p. 221
Open Winter	p. 222
[Double Sonnet on the Marten]	p. 223
[Sonnet Sequence on Fox and Badger]	p. 225
[Field-Mouse's Nest]	p. 228
[Birds at Evening]	p. 229
[Trespass]	p. 230
Glinton Spire	p. 231
Poems Written at the High Beach Asylum
A Walk in the Forest	p. 235
London versus Epping Forest	p. 236
The Gypsy Camp	p. 237
Two songs and some stanzas from Child Harold: Song ("The sun has gone down with a veil on his brow")	p. 238
[stanzas] ("Mary, thou ace of hearts, thou muse of song")	p. 239
[song] Written in a Thunderstorm July 15th 1841	p. 242
Don Juan: A Poem	p. 244
Poems and Prose Written at Northborough, Between Two Asylums
Recollections of Journey from Essex [prose account]	p. 257
Two songs for Child Harold: Song a ("I've wandered many a weary mile")	p. 265
Song b ("Here's where Mary loved to be")	p. 266
[Prose sketch]: "Closes of greensward"	p. 267
[Lines Written on St Martin's Day, 11 November 1841, manuscript text]	p. 268
Poetry Written While an Inmate of the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum
Graves of Infants	p. 271
Stanzas ("Black absence hides upon the past")	p. 272
To Mary	p. 273
A Vision	p. 274
Sonnet ("Poets love nature")	p. 275
An Invite to Eternity	p. 276
The Dying Child	p. 278
The Invitation	p. 280
Lines: "I Am"	p. 282
Sonnet: "I Am"	p. 283
Song ("True love lives in absence")	p. 284
My Early Home Was This	p. 286
The Winter's Spring	p. 287
Sonnet: Wood Anemone	p. 289
Sonnet: The Crow	p. 290
Pleasant Sounds	p. 291
Clock-a-clay	p. 292
Childhood	p. 294
To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait	p. 296
The Yellowhammer	p. 298
How Can I Forget	p. 299
To John Clare	p. 300
Birds' Nests	p. 301
Glossary	p. 305
Sources	p. 309
Index	p. 313

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents