I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare

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: John Clare
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Published: 11/15/2003
Pages: 318
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.40w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780374528690

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/06/2003 pg. 79
Booklist 10/15/2003 pg. 375
Library Journal 12/01/2003 pg. 116
New York Review of Books 09/23/2004 pg. 82
New York Review of Books 10/07/2004 pg. 42
Books & Culture 01/01/2005 pg. 23

About the Author

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 the author of Shakespeare and Ovid (1993) and The Genius of Shakespeare (1997). He is Leverhulme Research Professor and King Alfred Professor of English at the University of Warwick.

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