John
Clare
13 July 1793 - 20 May 1864
a. Poet's background and life
On July 13, 1793, John Clare was born at Helpston, Cambridgeshire, England. He was an agricultural labourer ever since he was a child. He attended school in Glinton Church until he was twelve. In his early adult years, Clare became a pot-boy in the Blue Bell public house and fell in love with a girl named Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently, he was a gardener at Burghley House. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as a lime burner in 1817. In the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. Malnutrition since childhood may be the main culprit behind his 5-foot stature and may have contributed to his poor physical health in later life.
In order to avoid himself being kicked out by his parents in their house, Clare offered his poems to a local bookseller named Edward Drury. Drury sent Clare's poetry to his cousin John Taylor of the publishing firm of Taylor & Hessey. Taylor published Clare's "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery" in 1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year his "Village Minstrel and other Poems" were published.
He married a woman named Martha "Patty" Turner in 1820. He possessed £45 annually, a sum he has never earned before because of his service from the Marquess of Exeter. Eventually this became insufficient. He tried working in the field when his health temporarily improved but he because seriously ill. He also had severe depression, which became worse after his sixth child is born.
His behaviour became more unpredictable as his alcohol consumption steadily increased along with his dissatisfaction with his own identity. He was becoming a burden to Patty and his family and in July 1837, he went of his own volition, to Dr Matthew Allen's private asylum.
During his first few asylum years, Clare re-wrote famous poems and sonnets by Lord Byron. In 1841, he left the asylum, thinking that he will meet his first love, Mary Joyce. He was convinced that he married her and Patty and had children from both of them. He didn't believe Mary Joyce's family when they said she died three years earlier in a house fire. He remained free until Patty called the doctors in. He was brought to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum in 1842. He remained here for the rest of his life under the humane regime of Dr Thomas Octavius Prichard, encouraged and helped to write. Here he wrote possibly his most famous poem, I Am.
He died on 20 May 1864, in his 71st year.
b. Poet's general style and body of work
○ In his time, Clare was commonly known as "the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet"
○ Clare resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar and orthography in his poetry and prose.
○ He used wordds of the Northamptonshire dialect, such as 'pooty' (snail), 'lady-cow' (ladybird), 'crizzle' (to crisp) and 'throstle' (song thrush).
○ It is common to see an absence of punctuation in his original works.
c. About "First Love"
○ The poem was about Mary Joyce, his first love.
○ He described how he felt during the time he met Mary Joyce, and how tongue tied he is to say anything.
○ Stanza one deals with his initial effects she has on him, such as the total awe and shock at her beauty. Clare's affected perception of reality is shown in the second stanza. The final stanza changes the tone of the poem, lamenting the fact that Clare's love is unrequited and shows how love can be cold and bitter just like winter.
○ Rhythm in the poem is key, creating six sections in the poem, with the rhyme scheme for each being A, B, A, B.
○ The poem is ambivalent in its attitude to first love and recounts both the pleasurable and terrifying aspects of this emotion.
○ There are soft alliterations, an example is of the 's' sounds in the second line which describes the emotion as 'so sudden and so sweet', creating a hushed, almost reverential tone while the description of love as 'sweet' expresses the pleasant nature of the experience.
d. Event or belief that motivated the poet to write this poem
○ The event that motivated Clare to write this poem was the moment he met Mary Joyce and how he felt at that time.
e. Anything else which is significant about the poem and poet
○ This proved that despite the fact that he got married with someone else, his love for Mary Joyce hasn't faded.