I found John Clare's poems very relatable. Like Wordsworth, Clare speaks (prominently in "Reccolections after a Ramble") of revisiting a place from the past. I don't know if I missed something or not, but I felt like Clare's poetry wasn't as dense. I read it and I understood it. I don't want to come across as unappreciative of Clare's work (because I felt there was a certain beauty to the poems and his wonderful diction), but the poems felt very physical and very surface, with not many retrospective philosophical components. This felt like what Wordsworth was doing, but to a different audience. Perhaps a lower, less educated class? Perhaps someone who experiences the same Nature, but doesn't necessarily think about the rain or the forest in the particular way Clare describes it in "Reccolections after a Ramble." Because the one thing that makes me think it could be for a higher educational level audience was his diction, but I don't think that this is a fair assumption; I don't know what words lower class people in Clare's time knew. Another thing I found interesting was Clare's complete lack of punctuation in all of his poems. I found myself creating my own sentences and my own rhythm. I'm wondering if this was intentional. Because unlike Bowles, Clare's lack of punctuation between stanzas (and frankly, in them as well) wasn't awkward.

There is a child-like wonder about the life (life other than humans) Nature holds in Clare's poems. This makes me think that the poems were intended for someone in the lower class, someone who has a desire to commune with Nature and goes about it in this way. The poems don't speak of extravagant trips or faraway lands. They explore the beauty of the everyday, the rain, a nightingale and her nest, the forest, all places that everyone has access to, but places that only people who don't have money to entertain themselves otherwise.

Another thing I noticed was that the speaker of the poems always entered the poem at a very surprising time and seemed ill-fitting, like they didn't belong there--much like the fact that human life doesn't seem to quite fit in with Nature. This is particularly evident in "The Badger," where men are mentioned more, but only kill the badger, a part of Nature.

But I really liked Clare, especially "The Nightingales Nest."

P.S. Is it just me or did every link on the blog change to an assaulting shade of blue? I like blue, but the shade makes the titles impossible to read; they won't focus and they hurt my eyes (as petty as that sounds, haha). It could just be my computer, but I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this.