Animals

I thought it was interesting how in Clare's poem, "The Badger," each stanza describes how the badger is being hunted. I felt really bad for the badger at first because it seemed like everyone wanted to kill it and although it wasn't said why that was, it made me see how the badger lives; its way of life is what bothers us and makes us not want them on our land. Clare humanized the badger in my opinion by emphasizing on how slow it ran and tried to make a safe nest but even the badger can't rely on the safeness of his home because the dogs/humans will find him. I thought it was funny how "The frightened woman takes the boys away," but to the reader there was nothing frightening about the badger. When it got to the last stanza where the badger started to play dead, it reminded me of the infamous honeybadger video. I don't know a lot about badgers but judging them based on that video they seem like pretty ruthless creatures who appear to be really slow but are in fact really strong-willed; even somewhat frightening.

"Recollections after a Ramble": Merry-Go-Round

Clare's "Recollections After A Ramble" felt as if I was on a merry-go-round. His repetition of rings "And the rings went whirling round", "As round the camp they danced a gig", "The Shepherd he was on his rounds", "At 'roley poley' down the hill", "Oak trees dancing round and round", "Saw the rings the droplets made", creates this effect of constant turning. It mimics the cycle of nature itself, which the poem does overall through the seasons. I just found it interesting to find that amount of repetition and it justified why I felt as if I were going round and round while reading the poem.

Clare's poem as a children's fantasy story.

Clare's poem reminded me of a children's fairy tale novel. If children were really his audience I would say that his message is to encourage children to abort all activities done by the rest like sports and playing with toys and be imaginative like in the poem The Village Minstrel. He didn't need those things in order to be happy he created fantasy in his natural world instead. I think the reason it reminds me of a children's fantasy is that in The Village Minstrel he is very imaginative with nature, he not only enjoys the sight of it but he has a relationship with nature. I think this can also be for an audience of poor people because he is enjoying all he had-nature and made it into something more fantasy-like meaning that these poor people don't need anything but to care for nature and enjoy it.

The Case For Nature As Epic, In Brief.

One of the interesting things I noticed about Clare's "Recollections After A Ramble" is how the central premise discovered at the end of the poem seems to almost be him championing the epic manner of nature. The last stanza of the poem reference the speaker's love for the rural life, and that "These with nature shall prevail/ When epics(') war harps broke in two." Epics are a product of man; nature has no epics written about it. Dante, Milton, Homer, and Virgil do not wax eloquent for pages and pages upon the landscapes of Hell, Paradise, Troy, and Carthage; they speak upon the heroic deeds of their characters (or the justness of divine retribution in Dante's case). Clare's work for the previous pages seems intent on justifying that all the little moments of nature can be just as worthwhile as describing.

Though I think the rampant misspelling and lack of grammar may be more for the meter of the poem, I join my fellow bloggers in wishing to taking a red pen (or two or three) to the page; sadly, I must leave that task to one with more time upon their hands than I.

A Young Peasant

I truly enjoyed John Clare's poems. Although I agree with some of the others of how it was a little irritating that Clare does not use punctuation and uses odd spelling, it is my opinion that this also adds to Clare's country charm. He was born into a poor family in Northhamptonshire in a small village. Luckily he received an education, partially only because he showed a strong appetite for learning .His lack of punctuation and strange words show that Clare was apart of the country he described. Also the "strange" words he uses in his poetry are actually part of the dialect of the region in which he grew up. Clare incorporates his cultural background to enrich his poetry. By reading Clare's poetry I felt like I was able to see nature through the eyes of someone who actually lived in it, not someone who simply went on excursions and was inspired by it. This is perhaps what was the most enjoyable aspect of Clare's poetry. Furthermore, Clare's use of rich imagery was also amazing to read. When reading his poetry my mind was filled with images of woods, birds, streams, dirt, insects, and the "locals".

The Bully And The Mouse

John Clare’s poems “The Mouse’s Nest” seems to have a theme that can be described as the disturbance man cause in the natural course of nature.  The voice of the poem talks about disturbing a small ball of grass as he is walking by and noticing a nursing mouse running away from it with her baby mice still attached to her breast.  The narrator chases after the mother to get a closer look at the disturbance he caused, but the mother runs away from her babies as the narrator approaches.  It was not until the narrator went away that the mouse returned to her litter and her motherly duties she was attending to before she was disturbed.  John Clare’s pastoral like language portrays the narrator as a bully who believes he is entitled to disturb and witness the natural course of all other creatures because he is big enough to do so.  It is interesting that the mouse was also a nursing mother which gives the mouse even more sympathy for the ruckus caused by the trampling of the man walking through the field.  The mouse was ensuring the survival of her young ones while the narrator deemed it necessary to disrupt this process.

John Clare Runs Away from Mice!

As noted by RachelMarie, John Clare's poems were rather confusing at first due to his lack of punctuation marks and odd spellings, but after going through his works again, I found that they were quite fun to read.  You can tell that Clare spent a lot of his time in the country, observing nature and the way people use it to their advantage.  Clare has a way of expressing the beauty of people within nature as well as the harsh realities of it, such as The Badger poem.  My favorite poem of his was the "The Mouses's Nest."  I could easily see the mother mouse scurrying out of the barn with it's babies and I imagine that I probably would have had the same reaction to them as John Clare.  

"As though she lived on song."

I loved reading Clare. My favorite of these poems was "The Nightingale's Nest." Although it is not broken down into conventional verses, the punctuation and the meter of the poem make it easy to read and understand. This was a breath of fresh air after reading some of our poems for the past few weeks that were difficult to break down. Clare's depiction of the Nightingale in this poem is beautiful, and I think that it makes nature more humanized and respectable to his audience. I love the way that he talks about the bird timidly singing all day long, and how she sang so beautifully that the other birds tried to out sing her but they could not.

The Firetails Nest

I read this poem twice before I decided on what story it was telling me. I enjoyed the imagery of the different birds going about their daily tasks, tweeting, tootling, crying to their offspring and mate. However, the juxtaposition of this mournful Firetail, really caught me off guard. With the introduction of man into nature, I should have known that only death and destruction should follow! Poor, unfortunate mother bird, if only her blue eggs truly "in safety lie." The hedger-to his toil returns- shaping the landscape to his will, ignorant of the precious life he is destroying. Perhaps, taking away from the picturesqueness of the unfolding scene.

Overall, I think I liked these smaller poems better.

"“The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet”

One of the things that struck me most in the works of John Clare was the lack of punctuation. Though surprisingly it did not effect the quality of my reading. I attribute this lack as an issue because of his minimally education. Clare left school at the age of twelve, and only attended sporadically due to his need to work on his parents farm. I agree with the previous post that the bird poems are quite similar and more difficult to catch the imagination...on the other hand his work The Badger has the ability to draw the reader in. From the first line "The badger grunting on his woodland track" I find myself cheering the badger on and hoping that he is able to escape. Sadly, like with so many things in nature man is it's ultimate demise. There is no dignity in his death, no honor of a fight well fought, only the image of him being overpowered by men and kicked until he "groans and dies."

Badgers and Birds and Clare, oh my!

First off, I agree with Marinna concerning the style of the poem being easier to understand. Clare's language and rhyme scheme are much simpler than those of Bowles and Wordsworth. I was able to breeze right through each poem and did not feel as though there was a lot of emotional depth intended. The poem The Badger is probably the most emotional in my opinion considering I felt horrible for the way in which the badger was killed. Clare seems to be quite fond of nature, similar to Gilpin, except on a more superficial level. Clare's poetry also resembles the other poets because in the first poem Reccolections after a Ramble, the narrator speaks fondly of years past. Stanzas twenty-eight and twenty-nine are perfect examples of "reccolections" on the past with the lines "Some wi many an anxious pain Childish wishes did pursue" and "Then I stood to pause again Retrospection sighd and smild". This looking back on emotions of the past stuck out in my mind as the deepest aspect of Clare's poem. As for the bird poems, I think that all three seemed too similar to enjoy reading more than one in a sitting.

Clare and The Mouse Nest

John Clare grew up in rural areas and worked on his family farm during his childhood; I think that this is significant when looking at his work. He has a love for nature and is very knowledgeable about earthly things. I enjoyed reading these selected poems and thought that "The Mouse Nest" was easy to picture and easy/enjoyable to read. His rhyming style in this poem was catchy.

Recollections After a Grammerless Ramble

As I finished reading "Recollections," my mind could not wrap out what I had just read. I went back to attempt to re-read the text and check for anything that looked out of place, and that's when I noticed something.There is only one break in the entire long poem, and it is right around line 80 out of 256. I was perplexed by this, and figured this was too out of place to be incidental; not so much what the break could mean, but what the lack of breaks could mean. Someone from a couple of classes ago mentioned something about some poetry adapting to a stream-of-consciousness style, and that is one possible idea of what I think this poem could exhibit. The "rambling" Clare refers to in his title is a variety of thoughts that are somehow connected together. Even if the ending thought is different is vastly different than the beginning one, they all still somehow connect together to form one, continuous thought.

Children's Stories Gone Awry

     In John Clare’s poetry, there was an odd theme that stood out to me – his ability to keep me focused on the poem, no matter the subject, and his unusual rhyme scheme made it all seem as a sort of children’s narrative rather than something produced by a poet of the Romantic Period.

     In a few of these poems, we found nothing but heroic couplets throughout the stanzas, giving off a sing-song sort of vibe that closely resembles that of a children’s book or of a nursery rhyme. I found this odd, for sure, and I often had to double back to read over a few lines because I had been paying more attention to Clare’s form than his content.

     However, while it may sound like Dr. Seuss, the subject matter certainly did not mirror the children’s author’s usual themes, especially in “The Badger.” I went into the poem expecting another happy-sounding sort of thing, but ended up in quite a different place. Beginning in the second stanza, Clare’s writing took a turn for the worse when he began to graphically detail the acts taken in order to end a hunt properly. Not only was I shocked, though, I was also a bit mystified. Clare may have gone somewhere unexpected for me, but he certainly still held my attention and kept me in a constant state of suspense, wondering what would happen next and how it would all turn out.

Why Clare no use proper grammar???

I had a hard time understanding just exactly what Clare was trying to do with his poems because of his rather interesting spelling and grammar, as well as the complete lack of any punctuation whatsoever. I came up with a few theories:

1. Clare didn't have a very extensive education and maybe grew up in the country and didn't know how to spell or to use proper grammar. If this is the case, why was he published? It could have been because the spelling/grammar etc. didn't matter as much back when he was published or maybe because it lent a sort of authenticity to his poetry about country life. 
2. My second theory is that Clare did this on purpose in order to make his poetry about the country seem more authentic. While talking about people in the country he used the same speech as them.
3. Was his entire collection of poetry a giant parody? I felt like he genuinely loved nature and the country, but there were some odd bits in his poems (a large part of this includes the irregular spelling and grammar) that made me think that he could have been mocking other romantic poets who went on and on about the wonders and the beauty of nature. 

I enjoyed reading Clare's poems, but this small point about his work really stood out to me. Did anyone else think that his different grammar, complete lack of punctuation and spelling was all a conscious decision, or just his natural style of writing? I'm not really sure what to think.

Mixed feelings for Clare

Snipe

Firetail

Nightingale

Badger

By the titles of the poems I honestly thought I would enjoy them more than I did but oh well. I read through them alright but having no commas or periods and only a few dashes made it particularly tiring to read. I didn't feel like he was rambling, just that he didn't know how to end a thought and figured the reader could do it for him.

Looking up the pictures of the birds gives a nice visual of what he's talking about because he doesn't really describe the animal's physical feature, just what he's doing in the bird poems. If this is his idea of writing so readers can experience what he went through while looking at these birds and scrounging around in the woods infringing on their privacy then it's not really what I look for in writings about nature.

The Badger was my favorite of his poems that we were to read because it had so much energy and so much more vivaciousness. It was more of a telling of a tale then the whole 'I'm creeping around trying not to scare this bird so I can find its nest and tell you about it' thing.

Basically, I like Clare's word choice and the subject matter, but most of the way he tells the reader just doesn't work for me.

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.

Gender significance in Clare

I think someone else mentioned some confusion as to the gender of the nightingale but for me, it seemed to extend beyond that one poem.  Several of the birds appeared to be portrayed as feminine and their eggs were specifically mentioned but other animals, such as the badger, were masculine.  I may be reading too much into it, but the badger was linked to a much more violent existence than the other animals described and their almost...relaxing poems.   Reading through, I wondered if Clare had a reason for doing this beyond the simple mother aspect of the birds or coincidence of factual representation.

Rambling

After reading a couple of John Clare's poems, I realized that he had some pretty nice things to say; however, I feel as though it took him forever to get to the point of the message he was attempting to convey. I was also a bit confused when reading The Nightingale's Nest because at one point it referred to the nightingale as a girl  and then a few lines down it says "his speckled breasts," so I must have missed a few words or something. Bring back Wordsworth!

Paige Lollie: Clare's Terms

Within the poetry of Clare's, I noticed that there was a heavy flow of "flowery" or "stereotypical" poetic terms. In truth, I find it more fun and enjoyable to read poems like this at times. Even if the poem is depressing or even appears to be "fake" or "trying to hard", I just find myself enjoying them a bit more. It feels more like a poem to me.

Clare seemed to enjoy to use adjectives. And these descriptions were done very well. I'll be the first to admit, I can be a sucker for a lot of adjectives. I like how he brings these different words in and how he weaves them into the poetry. It feels personal and very pretty to me. Clare appears to be very strong with sweet-talking.

Despite talking about nature, and even some of the natural nasty aspects of it, it is just written in such a way that one might have to re-read something because they didn't believe they read something about "to heave her rotten faggot up"in the midst of other lines like "sweet it was to feel the breeze Blowing cool without the sun".

Taking the poem Recollections after a Ramble, I noticed there were times terms were used multiple times.

Certain terms "sweet" or "sweetness" was used seven times. And the term "honey" (which I also associated with the term sweet) was used about three times. This seems like a very important or personal term to Clare.

He also really seems to embrace and cater to the senses.

The Tortoise and the Hare Retold

While reading Timothy I was struck by how familiar this story felt.  It felt like a retelling of the childhood story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" and the lesson where slow and steady wins the race is slowly drilled into your brain. Especially when Timothy said "my slowness is deceptively fast".  I believe that is what makes the difference.  We feel that we have to rush around to be productive (guilty as charged) when really it is just making sure we do things correctly the first time.  I think what made Timothy truly interesting is that it was an opinion of humans from a nonhuman.  This reptile is able to garner an accurate portrayal of human life, simply by observing our behaviors.  I feel like the line " I have seen these humans in their disarray.  Far more common than any finery" (13) and I had to laugh at this outside perspective.  We like to believe that we have everyone fooled, but a tortoise that spends 1/4 of the year buried in the ground can see through it.

Timothy and I Go WAY back

I enjoyed Klinkenborg’s Timothy more than any other piece we have read. It was easier to follow. I thought it was pretty much hilarious throughout its entirety. I also felt a heavy sense of environmentalism in the narrative. From Timothy’s perspective, humans seemed to be detached from the Earth and their environment. It was like Timothy was quite literally down-to-Earth while the humans were lost in a web of beliefs and materialism. I thought that this was the biggest comment the piece made, but it did so from within a pleasant narrative about an old turtle. I enjoy the excellence of this style of writing. Also, I enjoyed White’s narrative for its close descriptions of endless details. I think he was on to something very compelling in his opinion that thoroughly observing the details of a region uncovers a history one might otherwise miss. 

Fragmented Timothy

As I was reading Timothy, I found myself constantly jumping around because of the constant use of fragments throughout the work. I liked that it was from the point of view of a tortoise instead of the point of view of a person. The reader was able to understand the descriptions of nature and see the influence that nature has on people. I got a sense that the reader was supposed to see that people and nature react to seasons and death differently. Nature should be protected and people should try to learn from nature.

Intimacy in Wordsworth's, to M.H.

This was my favorite poem out of Wordsworth's, On the Naming of Places because it seemed that he was sharing an exclusive, intimate memory between him and his then-wife, Mary. This poem also made it somewhat easier to try to understand the dynamics of how we decide on naming places because naming something after a loved one is one of the most common ways people name things. The fact that he wants others who pass by this secret, unknown place named Mary, to enjoy the secret-beauty and solitude that most people don't get to witness, is very romantic and beautiful.

William Leslie Bowles Presentation

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I have compiled all of our collected information thus far. Michelle and I plan to continue to update this information as the semester progresses (including adding our findings about the remaining pamphlets from the first printing). If you thought of any other questions, feel free to comment and we will try to find answers for you.

William Leslie Bowles 

English poet, critic, and clergyman

“These Sonnets were originally composed in my solitary hours; when, in youth a wanderer among distant scenes, I sought forgetfulness of the first disappointment in early affections. “-Bowles

Background Information

• (Born September 24, 1762, Kings Sutton, Northamptonshire, England—died April 7, 1850, Salisbury, Wiltshire)
• Elected in 1781 a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford
• In 1792 he took his Master's degree, and was ordained to the curacy of Donhead St. Andrew in Wiltshire.
• Spent most of his early years in Northamptonshire, which is the same district that is the birthplace of Lyrical Ballads
• His work was highly acclaimed by the early romantics and is a foreshadowing of the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge.  
• Coleridge especially admired him for his genuine emotions.  He notes Bowels as a true genius and even as an icon.
• He admired Bowels so much he asked him for his opinion on his work Osorio, this lead to their tumultuous friendship.

Coleridge on Bowles

• 'Bowles and Cowper of the then living poets', says the Biographia Literaria, 'were, to the best of my knowledge, the first who combined natural thoughts with natural diction.
• 'Bowles, the most tender, and with the exception of Burns, the only always natural poet in our language.'
• he was now 'auspiciously withdrawn chiefly by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr. Bowles.'

Fourteen Sonnets

• They were revolutionary because they abandoned the 18^th century conventions and focused on both sentimental feelings and nature.
• They domesticate with the heart, and become, as it were, a part of our identity –Coleridge (an identity that the middle class was in search of)
• Contrary to Gilfillan’s notes the sonnets were not written about his rejection from a niece of Sir Samuel Romilly (although this did upset him), which was based on his lack of status.
• Instead they were written about the disappointment of love specifically- the death of one of his affections.
• The sonnets were written as a means to cope and heal with his grief.

Composition

“I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment. I thought nothing about the strict Italian model.”-Bowles

• He journeyed for some time through the north of England, Scotland, and parts of the Continent
• Some of the key places where the sonnets were composed are named in the sonnets such as: Dover cliffs, Wensbeck River, Bamburgh castle, Rhine River etc.
• Bowles and Charlotte Smith were the first 2 poets to make sonnets popular in England (according to Coleridge)
• Bowels does occasionally use a correct sestet for the less strict Italian form, however Bowels sonnets did not actually follow any true sonnet form (nor did Wordsworth)
• There is no rigid demarcation of octave and sestet-or any sestet at all. the melancholy sententiousness of the poet is reflected in the use of the closing couplet.
• The division is marked in the rhyme arrangements

Publication

• The fourteen sonnets were originally  published in 1789
• They were published   anonymously in a first edition of one hundred copies.
• The sonnets were printed as a Quarto (abbreviated 4to or 4°) is a book or pamphlet produced from full 'blanksheets', each of which is printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded two times to produce four leaves (that is, eight book pages). Each printed page now presents as one-fourth size of the full blanksheet.
• Expectations for the book's success were slim; the publisher was convinced he would never recoup the cost of printing the first one hundred copies. However, within six months all the copies had been sold and the printer acknowledged that he could have sold five times that number. The book was revised and reprinted several times and by 1805, it was in its ninth edition.

Modern Critiques

• He is considered the father of modern poetry by some scholars
• His work has also been cited as the influence for Wordsworth and Coleridge, and upheld the principles of the romantic poet but he was quickly out-shined by his predecessors.
• Critics also site that much of his work directly resembles the work of others such as Milton and Shakespeare.
• His legacy remains his sonnets and the impact that his genuine emotion and depiction of nature had on the romantics.

-->Sources: 

• http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:8367/itw/infomark/855/918/195481100w16/purl=rc1_CLC_0_H1420038476&dyn=3!xrn_1_0_H1420038476?sw_aep=txshracd2679
• http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=35140