Book description
John Clare will always be valued by many of his readers as one of England’s finest country or "nature" poets – the poet, as Edmund Blunden put it, of "that which grew from the incident and secrecy of wild life". Perhaps no other poet has Clare’s wealth of accurate observation and naturalist’s knowledge. His writing, with its telling detail from an abundance of plant, animal and rural lore, is invested also with a strong emotional charge, which is to be sought among a repetitive profusion of descriptive verse, half of it still unpublished.
There will always be readers, too, who prize most the near mystical late poems, written during his later years when he was plagued by emotional torment and mental illness.
Clare continued to write through all the troubles of his tragic but triumphant life, for writing was for him an activity as natural and as necessary as speaking. This volume puts the work of an unusually prolific writer, with his highly individual qualities, within reach of all those who admire this poet.
