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?
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