The Badger

What struck me most about John Clare's poem, "The Badger," was its sound. However, instead of paying attention to the rhyme and meter, I was drawn to the actual narrative noises in the poem. Because the rhyme scheme is a very standard AABB scheme, I fell into a very natural rhythm while I read it. I wasn't distracted trying to figure out how to say each verse (like I am with Burns's poetry), so I could focus on what was actually happening in the poem. In this sense, "The Badger" almost reminded me of Hemans' "Casabianca" or other poems of the sort.

These narrative-type poems set themselves apart from much of the Romantic poetry we've read. A lot of the poems in this course tend to vacillate between effusive, stream-of-consciousness style verse (which the poets oftentimes illustrate with complex meter, rhyme, and diction) and narrative lyric. Even some of the active lyric portions of the poems, though, can be confusing. At its most complex, Romantic poetry is a hodge-podge of form and content intricately woven into verse.

"The Badger" is one example of Romantic poetry that abstains from this tendency. We must ask, then, how is it romantic? I think that the poem is romantic in two essential ways. Firstly, it says something grand: it comments on the violence of men toward the animal world and asks us to question what we think we know about perpetrators and victims. Here is a badger--a supposedly awkward, aggressive, unattractive animal--fighting for his life and being beaten to submission by a group of cackling men with nothing better to do. What does this say about mankind?

Secondly, the poem is romantic because it draws the reader into a live-action journey, where everything is chaotic, loud, and rushed. The repetition of sounds throughout the poem does this the most. The badger "grunts," "cries," "cackles," and "groans." The men "hoot," "break," "tumble," "clap," "laugh shout and fright," "shout," "hollo," "uproar" "swear and reel," and "urge." Even the wounded hare and the swarm of bees (who are minor characters in the poem) buzz and make a commotion. Reading the poem, then, is an experience in itself. It is not merely a flash of pretty images and metaphors, but a full live-action journey.

An Unenthused Opinion of the Nightingale

Compared to Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, Clare’s The Nightingale’s Nest portrays an unromantic description of the famous bird. It is hard to read John Clare, like most of the other Romantic Poets, without taking into account his lifestyle and upbringing. Clare’s peasant upbringing is important to his descriptions of the natural world. The nightingale is apart of the speakers everyday life and is “heard many a merry year-/ At morn and eve, nay, all the livelong day” (5-6). Although the nightingale is ever present, the bird only reveals itself 20 lines into the poem when the speaker notes that it’s strange that “so famed a bird / Should have no better dress than russet brown” (20-21). The speaker is unimpressed by the physical appearance of the nightingale and it’s nest. The nest is described as being made of “dead oaken leaves” (78), “scraps of grass” (80) and “scarce materials” (81), providing an uninspiring image of the famed nightingale’s dwelling. The speaker’s observations of the nightingale describe this literarily famous bird as being pretty ordinary. This unromantic view of nature can be attributed to Clare’s deep understanding of nature based on his upbringing and lifestyle in the countryside. While Keats portrays a romanticized and enchanting account of the power of the nightingale’s song, Clare’s interpretation is not flowered up. Clare’s writing is much more observation based instead of relying on imagination and glamorized views of the natural world.

Nightingale's Nest

Clare uses a very interesting form in this poem. He uses caesure and enjambment to slow down the rhythm of the piece, this makes the reader feel similar to the speaker who is observing the nightingale in the poem.

One of the most striking things about this poem is that Clare's language is much more tangible than the language of Shelley or Byron but his poetry still describes the beauty of nature. Some of the imagery is truly beautiful and intricate. Clare's use of a less formal voice allows the reader to feel closer to the content in the poetry. The nature described in his poetry is more accessible and therefore more real for the reader.

I have often been reading the poetry in this class and asking if the writer was writing for money, fame, or to write. I found that Clare lived as a peasant and this may be why he was able to write in such an accessible, "common-man" type of way. After learning this, I considered the idea that Clare may have wrote this poem about a nightingale knowing that it would sell since birds were a popular poetry topic.

“The Poet in His Joy” – towards a realization of happiness in poetics through John Clare

Clare is such a joy to read, and is probably my favorite Romantic poet next to Blake and perhaps only rivaled in some ways by Keats. I loved reading the other blog posts about language and "poesy" in regards to a retrospective on this course. For whatever reason, Clare seems both quintessentially romantic and also totally grounded in this world. 

Most poets this semester encounter some kind of despair, put-on or not, but John Clare, who loved, Jain-esque, the dirt of the world and the insects burrowing in the grass beneath his feet, faced the great sadness of being kept in an insane asylum for the last twenty years of his life. I believe that Clare’s work principally focuses on a sought-after beauty and happiness, though not one, as in Keats, that functions in terms of fancy and imagining, but rather in the materiality of the world. “True poesy is not in words,” he writes in “Pastoral Poesy.” “But images that thoughts express” (1-2). What are the images of which Clare is fond? “The dust mills that the cowboy delves / In banks for dust to run…The morn with saffron strips and gray, / Or blushing to the view, / Like summer fields when run away / In weeds of crimson hue” (21-22 and 69-72). I like Clare because, to me, he seems to resist a kind of intellectual analysis I usually bring forward in my poetry reading – the work is simple, full of color and life, and rests on “humble quietness” (108). The poems seem to match the days we’re now in – light-strewn, grass-bent, work-shy and framed by the patience of trees. I can very much see how these poems may be boring, as their pleasantness doesn’t reach the lofty perfumes of Keats, the drawling narratives of Wordsworth, the smacking heavens and hells of Blake, the metaphysics of Shelley, the dreams of Coleridge, the bawdy-puns of Byron, nor the political concerns of Barbauld. Yet, for whatever reason, the poems of Clare feel the closest to nature in terms of their being “as harmless as a song” (112). We’ve witnessed natural apocalypse and extreme beauty – Clare’s wants the human being as idle witness, as he writes in “The Nightingale’s Nest”: “let the wood gate softly clap, for fear / The noise may drive her from her home of love…For we will have another search to-day, / And hunt this fern-strewn thorn clump round and round / And where this seeded wood grass idly bows, / We’ll wade right through, it is a likely nook” (47-50). Clare’s poems seem a likely nook for these happy days.

The Nightingale's Nest

I thought it was really interesting that in the biography about Clare it mentioned that he was always looking for help and assistance in getting his pieces ready to print and to bring out to the public. When I noticed the lines in The Nightingale's Nest that were originally from Keats, I wondered if this was included in that pattern of needing assistance. Would Clare have considered this assistance? I know that several of the poets we've read have referenced other poets or had other poets help them, so I know that this is not completely abnormal, but I thought that the direct use of Keats' lines were really interesting. I thought it worked, but I didn't think of highly of them as I did when Keats wrote them. I almost feel badly about that because I did really like this poem, but even though the lines sounded good here, I thought they sounded better with Keats. Maybe that's just because Keats was Keats and you can't quite compete with him, so that's why it doesn't quite work as well.
The other thing I found really interesting was the grammar. As it also said in the bio, Clare didn't really pay much attention to grammar and his work was often cleaned up by his editor. Both this fact, and the fact that he felt he needed the help of other poets really intrigued me. That information makes me think that Clare was a really insecure poet, but I didn't get that sense through his writing so much. That being said, it doesn't seem like Clare felt his grammar needed to be cleaned up, the only thing he seemed to explicitly ask for help was the actual writing. Would Clare think that his writing was really his own if John Taylor published his work only after having cleaned up the piece himself?

Images not Words

My final post is inspired by Addie's post. After reading her post I thought about the final post in the course and about what romanticism really means. We spent the entire semester talking about a time period and about poets labeled as "romantic." What does it mean? It is hard enough to define what poetry is, but how do we define this crucial time period in poetry. I think that John Clare's Pastoral Poesy" gives us one of the closest thoughts about poetry and romanticism.

In his lines, "True poesy is not in words, / But images that thoughts express" Clare captures an element of poetry that we discuss all of the time in class, but it is an aspect of class that we take for granted. Poetry and specifically romantic poetry does not just seem to be about the words. When I signed up for this course, I thought good poetry was about knowing the right words and being able to put those words together beautifully. However, after reading many of the poets this semester it becomes clear that poems are not just collections of words on a page, but rather they provide lines of poetry that suggest directions for your thoughts to travel. Clare's idea that poetry is about images is an important concept when thinking about poetry because it helps us decide why some poetry is successful and why other poems seem to fail in what they attempt to do. 

For example, Percy Shelley's Ode to the West Wind succeeds because the structure of the poem and the intentional decisions regarding language allow the reader to feel the wind in the poem. The West Wind serves both as the topic of the poem, but also functions as a character in the poem. It is not that the wind has a distinct voice in the lines of the poem, but it seems that the wind is responsible for the space between the lines and the order and configuration of the lines and words. Shelley gives the reader images and feelings about the wind that transcend the meaning of any individual word or line. However, I felt Felicia Hemans Casabianca failed to present vivid images, and instead (as professor Oerlemans said so well) the poem lost control of its images. We discussed in class the way that no lines jumped off the page, but that does not mean that she did not use big enough words, or that her lines did not read well. This poem lacked "tattoo lines" because word, line, or stanza inspired me to travel to the place of the poem. Hemans describes a dramatic boat fire. This moment is both intense and also filled with an abundance of interesting and rarely seen images. However, she does not take advantage of such a rich topic, and rather than allowing the reader to be on the fiery boat and feel the heat of the fire, the poem describes the scene in a way that the reader does not fully understand the picture that Hemans is trying to create. 

Thoughtlessness Of Thought

As we wrap up the semester and I write my final blog post, Clare’s “Pastoral Poesy” seems a fitting focus to conclude a Romantic course. I will admit the first thing I did before reading this poem was Google the word “poesy” and found it to be a body of poems or the or the art or composition of poetry – thus pastoral poesy would appear to be the epitome of a typical “romantic” poem.

“True poesy is not in words,

But images that thoughts express,

By which the simplest hearts are stirred

To elevated happiness”

To me, these lines immediately echoes what we have stated all year, that poetry can change the world – that a poem is more than a collection of words with a meter and rhyme scheme, it is an “image” that is capable of changing the emotions of those consuming it. The rest of the poem is then somewhat of a commentary on this idea or a commentary on nature poems. As the poem progresses I find it difficult to understand Clare’s tone and attitude towards these type of pastoral poems. Is he praising the poets who can find the beauty in every form of nature? Or is Clare being somewhat ironic and criticizing poets for turning every piece of nature into some sort of art? Of course whichever stance Clare is taking it must be acknowledged that he is writing a poem about nature.

“Will simple shepherds’ hearts imbue with nature’s poesy” (73-74)

Retrospectively, “Nature’s poesy” seems to be applicable to all the poets we have read for this course. Beyond the literal nature filled content of so many of the romantic poems, aren’t the romantic poets completely representing what it means to imbue hearts (at least they want to) to look at one’s somewhat mundane surroundings and make them grandiose with meaning. And further to compose these poems in a way that appears effortless and emphasizes the "thoughtlessness of thought" (27). John Clare appears to have a firm grasp and awareness of what the poets of the time are trying to accomplish with their poetry and acknowledges it in a manner that many other poets do not.