"I Am" : The Selected Poetry of John Clare

"I Am"Author(s): John ClareHail, humble Helpstone ... Where dawning genius never met the day, Where useless ignorance slumbers life awayUnknown nor heeded, where low genius triesAbove 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.Review(s):“What distinguishes Clare is an unspectacular joy and a love for the inexorable one-thing-after-anotherness of the world.” —Seamus Heaney“Clare grabs hold of you--no, he doesn't grab hold of you, he is already there, talking to you before you've arrived on the scene, telling you about himself, a