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After years of indifference and neglect, John Clare (1793-1864) is now recognized as one of the greatest English Romantic poets. Clare was an impoverished agricultural laborer, whose genius was generally not appreciated by his contemporaries, and his later mental instability further contributed to his loss of critical esteem. But the extraordinary range of his poetical gifts has restored him to the company of contemporaries like Lord Byron, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
This authoritative edition brings together a generous selection of Clare's poetry and prose, including autobiographical writings and letters and illustrates all aspects of his talent. It contains poems from all stages of his career, including love poetry and bird and nature poems. Written in his native Northamptonshire, Clare's work provides a fascinating reflection of rural society, often underscored by his own sense of isolation and despair. Clare's writings are presented with the minimum of editorial interference, and with a new introduction by the poet and scholar Tom Paulin.
This authoritative edition brings together a generous selection of Clare's poetry and prose, including autobiographical writings and letters and illustrates all aspects of his talent. It contains poems from all stages of his career, including love poetry and bird and nature poems. Written in his native Northamptonshire, Clare's work provides a fascinating reflection of rural society, often underscored by his own sense of isolation and despair. Clare's writings are presented with the minimum of editorial interference, and with a new introduction by the poet and scholar Tom Paulin.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
John Clare
319 books110 followersJohn Clare was an English poet, in his time commonly known as "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet", born the son of a farm labourer at Helpston (which, at the time of his birth, was in the Soke of Peterborough, which itself was part of Northamptonshire) near Peterborough. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be one of the most important 19th-century poets.
For other authors with this name see: psychotherapist and artist John Clare, history educator John D. Clare and John Clare.
For other authors with this name see: psychotherapist and artist John Clare, history educator John D. Clare and John Clare.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 21, 2022
John Clare is one of my favourite poets and I often feel that he is overlooked and relatively unheard of outside of academic circles. And this is a bit of a tragedy, just look how few ratings he has here on Goodreads!
Unlike the other romantics, he did not achieve much fame in his lifetime. He was relatively unknown and spent a large part of his life in a mental asylum. He wrote much of his poetry very close to where I live; he wondered the fields here almost two hundred years ago and was at a loss when he saw the landscape declining, to be replaced by enclosed agriculture. He captured the essence of nature in his words as he lamented the death of a rural England. He celebrated the natural world and the animals, writing passionately against a world undergoing great change as the populations grew and the landscape began to modernise.
One thing Clare did do better than the other romantics poets was really explore the animal kingdom. He didn’t just write about nightingales; he used so many birds and woodland life in his works. He was a real advocate of nature; you could tell he’d spent so much time observing it and admiring it. Had he been alive today he would have been an activist or an environmental campaigner or perhaps even a naturalist. His writing captures much of his intense interest and fixation on the lives of other creatures. His words give them a voice.
Notably, Clare taught himself how to read; he wasn’t educated like the rest of the romantics. He had a massive disadvantage. He learnt to write poetry by copying the style of his peers; he adapted it and made it his own, and eventually he developed his own poetic voice. Is this not something to admire? Clare was a shepherd, not a scholar or a literary critic or a pompous Lord. The early romantics advocated oneness with nature; surely, out of the crowd Clare is the one with the most experience. He lived the rural life from the beginning, and his poetry reflects it so blatantly. He did not need to imagine what it was to be one with landscape.
So consider this review a recommendation, a recommendation to pick up a volume of Clare’s poetry and to see exactly what he does so well. He writes politically against natural injustice and the corrupt taking control of the land; he captures the beauty of animals, of birds and foxes and badgers. His words are a literary monument which capture the essence of romanticism: he had a wonderful mind.
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You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
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Unlike the other romantics, he did not achieve much fame in his lifetime. He was relatively unknown and spent a large part of his life in a mental asylum. He wrote much of his poetry very close to where I live; he wondered the fields here almost two hundred years ago and was at a loss when he saw the landscape declining, to be replaced by enclosed agriculture. He captured the essence of nature in his words as he lamented the death of a rural England. He celebrated the natural world and the animals, writing passionately against a world undergoing great change as the populations grew and the landscape began to modernise.
One thing Clare did do better than the other romantics poets was really explore the animal kingdom. He didn’t just write about nightingales; he used so many birds and woodland life in his works. He was a real advocate of nature; you could tell he’d spent so much time observing it and admiring it. Had he been alive today he would have been an activist or an environmental campaigner or perhaps even a naturalist. His writing captures much of his intense interest and fixation on the lives of other creatures. His words give them a voice.
Notably, Clare taught himself how to read; he wasn’t educated like the rest of the romantics. He had a massive disadvantage. He learnt to write poetry by copying the style of his peers; he adapted it and made it his own, and eventually he developed his own poetic voice. Is this not something to admire? Clare was a shepherd, not a scholar or a literary critic or a pompous Lord. The early romantics advocated oneness with nature; surely, out of the crowd Clare is the one with the most experience. He lived the rural life from the beginning, and his poetry reflects it so blatantly. He did not need to imagine what it was to be one with landscape.
So consider this review a recommendation, a recommendation to pick up a volume of Clare’s poetry and to see exactly what he does so well. He writes politically against natural injustice and the corrupt taking control of the land; he captures the beauty of animals, of birds and foxes and badgers. His words are a literary monument which capture the essence of romanticism: he had a wonderful mind.
___________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
__________________________________
December 4, 2021
A book with a contentious pedigree -- the author (in 1965) claimed he held copyright to all of Clare's unpublished poems. This had the effect of squashing Clare scholarship as any essays or books on Clare had to seek permission and pay for the right to print poems. Consequently, 90% of Clare's work could not be easily referred to. The Oxford edition prints Clare untouched -- no punctuation, odd spellings, everything left to suggest that Clare was a rustic poet.
The book is introduced by Tom Paulin who was one of those who campaigned to free Clare (as it were). Not surprisingly, Paulin re-invents Clare within a political context rather than a natural history context. The major poems are those that celebrate nature.
"Each object of my ear and eye
Made paradise of poesy."
This couplet from "The Progress of Rhyme" encapsulates Clare: his responsiveness towards nature's sights and sounds and the visual and auditory aspects of poetry. Clare is also a poet of childhood rather than political contexts:
"Tho all my childish scenes are in my sight
Sad manhood marks me an intruder now."
"I love in childhood's little book
To read its lessons thro
And oer each picture page to look
Because they read so true."
"O grievous day that changed me from a child."
And he is much more of an intertextual poet than has been acknowledged. Not well educated, but not a rustic clown either. "In the cowslips peeps I lye" is a fine re-working of Shakespeare's song for Ariel. Milton's Paradise Lost and Thomson's The Seasons also provide a pastoral background forClare's divine view of nature. Bates, Clare's most significant biographer, has suggested that the source of Clare's madness was his sense of aloneness -- Clare's twin sister died at birth. His poetic yearning for nature, the archetypal feminine, was a way of restoring balance in his mind. As with Vaughan, there is a backward looking aspect to Clare, a turning towards what Vaughan called "angel infancy", a return to Eden before exile. For Vaughan, a world before the Civil War. For Clare, a world before land enclosure -- a literal fencing off from Edenic fields of childish play. There is also a very modern note in Clare: a spiritual drive, as Duncan phrased it, the opening of the field of imagination and composition.
I found this edition slightly confusing. There are better editions and my rating reflects this, not Clare's poetry. In the middle of a section on Bird Poems there is a poem to a cricket! I would have liked to see the poems in editions, as Clare published them, as sequences, rather than split into 1812-31 and 1832-37; into pre-madness and madness poems. And there were signs of disillusion and melancholy in 1825, in the Helpston Period -- in poems such as "Love and Memory' and 'Sabbath Bells." So, the split is not biographically true.
The book is introduced by Tom Paulin who was one of those who campaigned to free Clare (as it were). Not surprisingly, Paulin re-invents Clare within a political context rather than a natural history context. The major poems are those that celebrate nature.
"Each object of my ear and eye
Made paradise of poesy."
This couplet from "The Progress of Rhyme" encapsulates Clare: his responsiveness towards nature's sights and sounds and the visual and auditory aspects of poetry. Clare is also a poet of childhood rather than political contexts:
"Tho all my childish scenes are in my sight
Sad manhood marks me an intruder now."
"I love in childhood's little book
To read its lessons thro
And oer each picture page to look
Because they read so true."
"O grievous day that changed me from a child."
And he is much more of an intertextual poet than has been acknowledged. Not well educated, but not a rustic clown either. "In the cowslips peeps I lye" is a fine re-working of Shakespeare's song for Ariel. Milton's Paradise Lost and Thomson's The Seasons also provide a pastoral background forClare's divine view of nature. Bates, Clare's most significant biographer, has suggested that the source of Clare's madness was his sense of aloneness -- Clare's twin sister died at birth. His poetic yearning for nature, the archetypal feminine, was a way of restoring balance in his mind. As with Vaughan, there is a backward looking aspect to Clare, a turning towards what Vaughan called "angel infancy", a return to Eden before exile. For Vaughan, a world before the Civil War. For Clare, a world before land enclosure -- a literal fencing off from Edenic fields of childish play. There is also a very modern note in Clare: a spiritual drive, as Duncan phrased it, the opening of the field of imagination and composition.
I found this edition slightly confusing. There are better editions and my rating reflects this, not Clare's poetry. In the middle of a section on Bird Poems there is a poem to a cricket! I would have liked to see the poems in editions, as Clare published them, as sequences, rather than split into 1812-31 and 1832-37; into pre-madness and madness poems. And there were signs of disillusion and melancholy in 1825, in the Helpston Period -- in poems such as "Love and Memory' and 'Sabbath Bells." So, the split is not biographically true.
Read
May 27, 2015Brought to you courtesy of Reading Project 2015. And slightly painfully cos I'm sick.
Honestly one poet left on my random poetry self ... and it had to be John Clare.
Marginalised blah blah canon blah blah neglected blah blah. But I'm kind of super into him.
He's lost between labels: peasant and madman and poet. His selfhood so absolutely entwined with rural England and Englishness.
One of those people whose lives in their realness defy all fiction.
Honestly one poet left on my random poetry self ... and it had to be John Clare.
Marginalised blah blah canon blah blah neglected blah blah. But I'm kind of super into him.
He's lost between labels: peasant and madman and poet. His selfhood so absolutely entwined with rural England and Englishness.
One of those people whose lives in their realness defy all fiction.
Read
October 28, 2021Read for my English class, British Literature and Culture: Romanticism and the Anthropocene.
October 31, 2023
John Clare is an amazing poet who definitely deserves more recognition. His poems are so evocative and vivid, his early work describing the pastoral landscape so beautifully. The shift in his writing (themes, mood, structure) as his life changes is really interesting to note. I’m currently writing an essay about how he compares nature to Eden and the idea of it being destroyed/lost.
January 1, 2020
John Clare was brilliant with language, and deserves to be read and remembered as among the finest Romantic poets. His brilliance lies not in complex rhyming schemes. On the whole, they are fairly straightforward and simple lyric constructions. What is unique is the choice of words and feeling. Clare uses words that draw attention to the images themselves, sometimes jarring the reader out of the simple rhyming pattern. The author of the introduction notes an example of this in the sonnets of the “Badger’ sequence, with the introduction of the ‘shaggy’ and ‘frequent stone’ images. In fact, the adjectives are in themselves the beauty of Clare, changing the emphasis and cadence of the verse with each variation. Pick any poem, and these adjectives will highlight themselves. Clare identifies the reader with nature and wild animals, and places that identification as a primary point of human existence. A great example of this is The Setting Sun: “This scene how beauteous to the musing mind / That now swift slides from my enchanting view / The Sun sweet setting yon far hills behind / In other worlds his Visits to renew / What spangling glories all around him shine / What nameless colours cloudless[s] and serene / (A heavnly prospect brightest in decline) / Attend his exit from this lovly scene-- / --So sets the christians sun in glories clear / So shines his soul at his departure here / No clouding doubts nor misty fears arise / To dim hopes golden rays of being forgiven / His sun sweet setting in the clearest skyes / In safe assurance wings the soul to heaven—“ (6). Reccolections After A Ramble is an extended poem in which Clare talks about all the wonders of nature he experienced while on a walk, and is probably the most representative of his poems. I love the poem To the Winds: “Hail gentle winds I love your murmuring sounds / The willows charm me wavering too and fro / And oft I stretch me on the dasied ground / To see you crimp the wrinkling flood below / Delighted more as brisker gusts succeed / And give the landscape round a sweeter grace / Sweeping in shaded waves the rip’ning mead / Puffing their rifl’d fragrance in my face / Pictures of nature ye are doubly dear / Her children dearly loves your wispering charms / Ah ye have murmurd sweet to many an ear / That now lies dormant in deaths Icey arms / And at this moment many a weed ye wave / That hide the bard in his forgotten Grave” (65). Clare also intertwines his love of nature with his own personal experience, aptly reflected in the poem [Patty]: “Ye swampy falls of pasture ground,/ And rushy spreading greens; / Ye rising swells in brambles bound, / And freedom’s wilder’d scenes; / I’ve trod ye oft, and love ye dear, / And kind was fate to let me; / On you I found my all, for here / ‘Twas first my Patty met me. // Flow on, thou gently plashing stream, / O’er weed-beds wild and rank; / Delighted I’ve enjoy’d my dream / Upon thy mossy bank: / Bemoistening many a weedy stem, / I’ve watch’d thee wind so clearly; / And on thy bank I found the gem / That makes me love thee dearly. // Thou wilderness, so rudely gay; / Oft as I seek thy plain, / Oft as I wend my steps away, / And meet my joys again, / And brush the weaving branches by / Of briars and thorns so matty; / So oft reflection warms a sigh,-- / Here first I met my Patty.” (66) There are interesting poems such as The Gipsey’s Camp that depict England in the first half of the 19th century, and there is the full breadth of poetry, taking hours upon hours to get through in long contemplation, but which ultimately reward the reader for the effort. Clare truly is a master, albeit one that many have not read.
September 19, 2011
The poetry of John Clare crept up on me over a long period of years as I would see and hear a smidge of his work referred to when the generic word Romantic Pastoral poetry was discussed. I started off reading a few of his poems and was hooked in the years when finding a "complete" volume of his poems wasn't that easy, as he wasn't that popular. As if the flood gates opened following his major works being published by Oxford Press came an excellent biography (Jonathan Bate), BBC programmes and other writers taking parts of his life for inspiration in their works both fictional and non fictional;Iain Clair's "Edge of the Orison" and the Booker nominated Adam Fould's "The Quickening Maze". What makes his poetry unique is his witness of a changing beloved landscape from rural idyl to the British Industrial Revolution blight and its consequences to the souls of rural peoples. That he ended his days in an asylum with the accusation that the intensity of his "posy" (as they called it!)or poetry caused the loss of his wits. I defy anyone to read one of his final poems when facing his end in the asylum probably not able to look out on his beloved Northamptonshire pastoral setting, and not feel the ache of one removed from what one truly loves:
I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
October 24, 2020
Did I read all the poems collected here? Of course not! How many lyric poets deserve 400+ pages? But the short-lined “songs” and lyrics, especially those about love or his personal psychological states can be quite interesting—and his pastiche of Byron—his own Don Juan—is funny and very Byronic. His nature poems—the vast majority of his work—are good, if that’s your thing, but it’s too much of a good thing for me.
November 16, 2019
An early environmental poet and activist, whose ties to Helpston led to his insanity after the Commons fell victim to Enclosure.
Plain language, narrative poems that stick with you after reading. Clare wrote the sort of poems that Wordsworth aspired to write.
Plain language, narrative poems that stick with you after reading. Clare wrote the sort of poems that Wordsworth aspired to write.
October 16, 2020
The best poems on birds and nature I've ever read.
June 3, 2023
"The Nightingales Nest"
"To the Snipe"
"To the Snipe"
May 28, 2024
john clare is like the love of my life and also the subject of my thesis so <3
July 27, 2010
Clare is great for nature poetry, but gets dull quickly because he never looks *into* things; he only sees the surface. Wordsworth, by contrast, though often thought of as a nature poet, doesn't describe things with any detail most of the time, but his nature is somehow more real by being transcendent (or transcended, perhaps).
Clare's lack of punctuation and capitalization also tires one a few poems in. Sure, it's easy to get used to it and figure sentence and clause breaks, for the most part, on the fly, but it's more work than one really wants from poetry, or rather not the *sort* of work one wants. Think of it like reading Spenser (or whomever you like) without the spelling modernized or even reading Middle English: it's that much work without any of the fun.
The poems are full of repeated thoughts and lines, and one would be forgiven for never reading another line of Clare the first time he uses one of his favorite words, "pooty," for "snail." I'm not sure which is worse between that and "diaper" used by Herrick to mean "with an interlacing pattern."
When Clare's poems are about natural objects, they are interesting enough taken in small portions. Interest rises when Clare writes about himself and/or love. Sadly, the poems with love as their subject are almost exclusively from the period of Clare's madness, as are his only satirical pieces (included in this selection, anyway), an attempt at "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." One hesitates to say that a man is more interesting when mad, but it seems to be the case with Clare.
I can't say I'm sad to be done with this book. Perhaps a smaller selection would have been wiser, but I have wanted to read Clare for some time, and I have a thing about getting all or most of a poet's works in one volume when possible. I see that the Penguin edition has considerably fewer poems than this Oxford World Classics, but it doesn't seem to have added punctuation either.
I don't think I'll ever read another poem about a bird's nest again.
Clare's lack of punctuation and capitalization also tires one a few poems in. Sure, it's easy to get used to it and figure sentence and clause breaks, for the most part, on the fly, but it's more work than one really wants from poetry, or rather not the *sort* of work one wants. Think of it like reading Spenser (or whomever you like) without the spelling modernized or even reading Middle English: it's that much work without any of the fun.
The poems are full of repeated thoughts and lines, and one would be forgiven for never reading another line of Clare the first time he uses one of his favorite words, "pooty," for "snail." I'm not sure which is worse between that and "diaper" used by Herrick to mean "with an interlacing pattern."
When Clare's poems are about natural objects, they are interesting enough taken in small portions. Interest rises when Clare writes about himself and/or love. Sadly, the poems with love as their subject are almost exclusively from the period of Clare's madness, as are his only satirical pieces (included in this selection, anyway), an attempt at "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." One hesitates to say that a man is more interesting when mad, but it seems to be the case with Clare.
I can't say I'm sad to be done with this book. Perhaps a smaller selection would have been wiser, but I have wanted to read Clare for some time, and I have a thing about getting all or most of a poet's works in one volume when possible. I see that the Penguin edition has considerably fewer poems than this Oxford World Classics, but it doesn't seem to have added punctuation either.
I don't think I'll ever read another poem about a bird's nest again.
September 8, 2022
John Clare apparently was "the silenced Romantic Poet": his prominence was far beneath Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Blake, Keats, and Co. But Clare's one I'm glad to have discovered - he's unique in that he writes simples songs praising the environment, as well as the fragility of the self. He's complex beyond what his poetry initially entails, and is one just as worth studying as the "Great Poets" of the Romantic era - especially if anyone wants Romanticism without all the Egocentrism.
*
Some of his simpler sonnets are awesome - like his tributes to his "Cottage," "To a Copse in Winter," and then another longer song that is instruction for building a cottage. It showcases his pure love of nature, with a stark difference from many Romanticists - it's not really about him in Nature, it's about his LOVE of Nature. Which is refreshing, because many Romantic poets and writers can be solipsistic in their taste, while Clare is not. His syntax is also interesting - he has an unconventional ordering of verbs, nouns, subjects, and adverbs that make his writing quite idiosyncratic.
*
"I Am" is one of his signature poems, and it's about the fragility of the self. At 18 lines, it's not as long nor dense quite as one of Keats's Odes, but it's quite complex and argues that selfhood is fragile and subject to the conflicts of life. He defines his selfhood in terms of negatives to start, demonstrating its elusive nature. He makes the ironic commentary that the Self as he feels it may not be visible or whole in the World, which is where we all build the Self, at least in social/modern terms. He wants the unity of childhood back - a chance to be untroubled as a simple soul before we die into life. Great work.
*
Like many Romanticists, Clare wrote many sonnets, some great, some good, some mediocre. I find the Sonnet form can get tedious, because you already had Shakespeare and Milton write the best that could ever come from the original Sonnet form. But read some of Clare's sonnets for their diversity, and as commemorations of Nature and Life.
*
Some of his simpler sonnets are awesome - like his tributes to his "Cottage," "To a Copse in Winter," and then another longer song that is instruction for building a cottage. It showcases his pure love of nature, with a stark difference from many Romanticists - it's not really about him in Nature, it's about his LOVE of Nature. Which is refreshing, because many Romantic poets and writers can be solipsistic in their taste, while Clare is not. His syntax is also interesting - he has an unconventional ordering of verbs, nouns, subjects, and adverbs that make his writing quite idiosyncratic.
*
"I Am" is one of his signature poems, and it's about the fragility of the self. At 18 lines, it's not as long nor dense quite as one of Keats's Odes, but it's quite complex and argues that selfhood is fragile and subject to the conflicts of life. He defines his selfhood in terms of negatives to start, demonstrating its elusive nature. He makes the ironic commentary that the Self as he feels it may not be visible or whole in the World, which is where we all build the Self, at least in social/modern terms. He wants the unity of childhood back - a chance to be untroubled as a simple soul before we die into life. Great work.
*
Like many Romanticists, Clare wrote many sonnets, some great, some good, some mediocre. I find the Sonnet form can get tedious, because you already had Shakespeare and Milton write the best that could ever come from the original Sonnet form. But read some of Clare's sonnets for their diversity, and as commemorations of Nature and Life.
Read
December 3, 2008An endless landscape of morts, glebs and teasels where you can soodle and elt at your leisure with neither the normative universalizing of observed detail nor that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons.
July 14, 2016
What a beautiful mind!
October 14, 2020
one Man can have rights
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews