The Rural Muse - John Clare

[Oola]

When thinking up a name for this website, I came up with the idea of Rural
Muse, not knowing then that it was actually a collection of poems by an
early 19th century poet called John Clare.

Just wondered if anyone has read any of his work and what they think of his
poetry?

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=G-x9vNL0EkIC&dq=rural+muse&pg=PP1&ots=3xcWTSaX2O&sig=1Ry3SUKWAg5tiMANQbG0vr85qxE&prev=http://www.google.co.uk/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Drural%2Bmuse%26btnG%3DGoogl e%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPP1,M1

(you can use the scroll on the right hand side to view the book).

[mrsj]

Hi, he was quite an interesting man, suffered from mental health problems. In one GCSE syllabus pupils have to write about one of his poems.

[Oola]

Oh really... I never covered him during my GCSEs (was about 10 years ago though). Really I should know about him seeing as I did an English Lit. GCSE and A-Level!!!! Do you teach English then mrsj?

[jazzactivist]

I don't know anything about him myself, but my partner is a poet and has just been studying John Clare's work. Apparently, he was what is now considered to be the first eco-poet.

[Oola]

Perhaps the powers-that-be must have inspired the name for this website then - I truly had no idea until I did a quick Google before I tried to register the name.!

Has your partner been published jazzactivist? What sort of poetry do they write/are they inspired by? At school really the only poetry I studied in depth was Sylvia Plath for my A-Levels. I did appreciate her work, but sometimes it was just a little too dark and tortured for my liking, and it was always alluring to the end that she knew she would come to. However she did have one brief 'lighter' moment in a poem she wrote about one of her babies:

You're - Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

[Redstart]

Lovely - and quite light and amusing for Silvia Plath!

[jazzactivist]

I quite like Sylvia Plath's work, Oola, although I wouldn't have wanted her life! Yes, my partner Andrew Forster is well published in literary magazines, and he has his first collection out this month called Fear of Thunder. He writes in a contemporary style using a 'snapshot' technique about memories from his childhood and teenage years in the 1970s / 80s, and also poems about poets and landscape eco-poetry. He is lucky as he works as a literature development officer as well as being a writer, so his whole life is immersed in his first love (I'm his second, but it's not so bad to be second to shelves of books!).