I Am (poem)

Last updated

"I Am" (or "Lines: I Am") [1] is a poem written by English poet John Clare in late 1844 or 1845 and published in 1848. It was composed when Clare was in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum [2] (commonly Northampton County Asylum, and later renamed St Andrew's Hospital), isolated by his mental illness from his family and friends.

Contents

Background and structure

This poem, written in three stanzas of regular iambic pentameter with an "ababab" rhyme scheme in the first stanza, an "cdcdee" scheme for the second stanza and an "fgfghh" for the third stanza, details Clare's finding of a sanctuary from the travails of his life in the asylum by reasserting his individuality in life [3] and love of the beauty of the natural world in which he will find peace in death. An irony of Clare writing a poem declaring "I am" is that at times during his years in asylums he believed he was Lord Byron and Shakespeare, even re-editing Byron's poems at one point.

The second stanza examines the alienation he feels from his family and friends due to his mental condition "And e'en the dearest - that I loved the best - / Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest". The final stanza adopts religious imagery, calling on God, recalling the garden of Eden and longing for the "vaulted sky", a reference to a cathedral-like heaven. It appears to both hope for a spiritual afterlife and accept the physical reality of peaceful repose in his beloved earth.

The house steward of the asylum, W. F. Knight, who worked there from April 1845 to the end of January 1850, transcribed the poem for Clare. The poem was first published on 1 January 1848 in the Bedford Times, [1] or per other sources in the Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of Saint Andrews for 1864, and later appeared with slightly altered text in Life of John Clare, the biography of the poet by Frederick Martin. [4] The poem is known as Clare's "last lines" [4] and is his most famous. [5]

The poem's title is used for a 2003 collection of Clare's poetry, I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare, edited by his biographer Jonathan Bate, [6] and it had previously been included in the 1992 Columbia University Press anthology, The Top 500 Poems. [7]

The poem is not to be confused with a sonnet also written by Clare and also entitled "I Am" (or "I Only Know I Am", or "Sonnet: I Am"). [1] The latter may, however, "be seen as a complementary piece". [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Keats</span> English Romantic poet (1795–1821)

John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first time reading Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry</span> Form of literature

Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet</span> Poetic form, traditionally fourteen specifically-rhymed lines

A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span> English poet and artist (1828–1882)

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–96). Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is ABABBCBCC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Autumn</span> Poem by English Romantic poet John Keats

"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year after the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode to a Nightingale</span> Poem by John Keats

"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also in Hampstead. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near the house that he shared with Keats in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the bird's song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. The poem is one of the most frequently anthologized in the English language.

Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Clare</span> English poet (1793–1864)

John Clare was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet. His biographer Jonathan Bate called Clare "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode on a Grecian Urn</span> 1819 poem by John Keats

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode on Indolence</span> 1819 poem by John Keats

The "Ode on Indolence" is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. The others were "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to Psyche". The poem describes the state of indolence, a word which is synonymous with "avoidance" or "laziness". The work was written during a time when Keats was presumably more than usually occupied with his material prospects. After finishing the spring poems, Keats wrote in June 1819 that its composition brought him more pleasure than anything else he had written that year. Unlike the other odes he wrote that year, "Ode on Indolence" was not published until 1848, 27 years after his death.

<i>Childe Harolds Pilgrimage</i> 1812–1818 narrative poem by Lord Byron

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a long narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. The poem was published between 1812 and 1818. Dedicated to "Ianthe", it describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man, who is disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode to Psyche</span> 1819 poem written by John Keats

"Ode to Psyche" is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". "Ode to Psyche" is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keats's attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a dramatic scene. The poem serves as an important departure from Keats's early poems, which frequently describe an escape into the pleasant realms of one's imagination. Keats uses the imagination to show the narrator's intent to resurrect Psyche and reincarnate himself into Eros (love). Keats attempts this by dedicating an "untrodden region" of his mind to the worship of the neglected goddess.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of literary terms</span> Terms and concepts used in language, literature, and literary analysis

This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in particular, see Glossary of poetry terms.

This is a glossary of poetry terms.

This article lists all known poems by American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe, listed alphabetically with the date of their authorship in parentheses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Keats's 1819 odes</span> Poems

In 1819, John Keats composed six odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. Keats wrote the first five poems, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche" in quick succession during the spring, and he composed "To Autumn" in September. While the exact order in which Keats composed the poems is unknown, some critics contend that they form a thematic whole if arranged in sequence. As a whole, the odes represent Keats's attempt to create a new type of short lyrical poem, which influenced later generations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English Romantic sonnets</span>

The sonnet was a popular form of poetry during the Romantic period: William Wordsworth wrote 523, John Keats 67, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 48, and Percy Bysshe Shelley 18. But in the opinion of Lord Byron sonnets were “the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions”, at least as a vehicle for love poetry, and he wrote no more than five.

<i>The Quickening Maze</i> 2009 historical fiction novel by Adam Foulds

The Quickening Maze is a 2009 historical fiction novel by British poet and author Adam Foulds and published by Jonathan Cape. The book received the Encore Award (2009), European Union Prize for Literature (2011) and was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize (2009) and Walter Scott Prize (2010). The book is based on the historical backdrop of a mental asylum run by Matthew Allen at High Beach in late 1830s and 1840s which had English poet John Clare admitted therein. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, another notable poet of the era, moves to High Beach to get his brother Septimus treated and Alfred, himself, has to overcome depression after the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam. The book narrates Clare's life, the asylum's effects on both poets and bases its storyline on the popular speculation of whether Clare and Tennyson had ever met.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romantic literature in English</span> Era in English-language literature

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, it arrived around 1820.

References

  1. 1 2 3 John Derbyshire. "I Am". John Derbyshire. Archived from the original on 25 June 2007. Retrieved 19 December 2007.
  2. Andrew Roberts. "Mental Health History (Hospitals)". Middlesex University. Archived from the original on 29 November 2007. Retrieved 19 December 2007. Materials for the author's thesis.
  3. Miller, Eric (21 March 2002). "Literary Encyclopedia: John Clare". The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company. Retrieved 20 December 2007.
  4. 1 2 "John Clare (1793-1864): I Am!". Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Library. Archived from the original on 6 December 2007. Retrieved 19 December 2007.
  5. Terrence Rafferty (15 February 2004). "Nature Boy". The New York Times . Retrieved 19 December 2007.
  6. John Clare (2003). I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare. Jonathan Bate. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   0-374-52869-1.
  7. William Harmon (1992). The Top 500 Poems . Columbia University Press. ISBN   0-231-08028-X.
  8. Christopher Howse (2004). Comfort. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN   0-8264-7641-4. [first lines] I feel I am, I only know I am / And plod upon the earth as dull and void