To John Clare

By John Clare
Well, honest John, how fare you now at home?
The spring is come, and birds are building nests;
The old cock-robin to the sty is come,
With olive feathers and its ruddy breast;
And the old cock, with wattles and red comb,
Struts with the hens, and seems to like some best,
Then crows, and looks about for little crumbs,
Swept out by little folks an hour ago;
The pigs sleep in the sty; the bookman comes—
The little boy lets home-close nesting go,
And pockets tops and taws, where daisies blow,
To look at the new number just laid down,
With lots of pictures, and good stories too,
And Jack the Giant-killer's high renown.

  1. Clare’s poem can be placed in a lineage of poetic self-address: think about Ben Jonson’s “An Ode to Himself” or contemporary examples such as Bernadette Mayer’s “The Way To Keep Going in Antarctica” and Graham Foust’s “To Graham Foust on the Morning of His Fortieth Birthday.” After reading Clare’s poem and the poems of others, think about the decision to invoke one’s own name in a poem. How are acts of self-reference positioned (in John Clare’s poem, for instance, in the title) and to what ends? After reading and thinking, write your own poem to yourself.
     
  2. Clare’s sonnet describes ordinary home life in both general and specific ways; it also, as Stephen Burt points out in his poem guide, conjures Clare’s childhood while seeming to remain in the present tense. Try writing a poem in which present and past flicker or oscillate back and forth. You might make lists of your childhood memories, of typical childhood scenes, and of observations of your home life now. Try to braid them together or leave them in separate sections of the poem, as Clare does.
     
  3. Clare’s poem ends with a scene of childhood reading. Taking that ending for a beginning, either continue Clare’s poem or craft one of your own that opens with a child reading. You might think about the differences between a child and an adult reading or you might use the poem as a space to recreate the effect of childhood (or adult) reading.

  1. How do you think scale works in this poem? Note the multiple uses of “little” (meaning both size and, perhaps age), and the final image of “Jack the Giant-killer.” Does the poem use scale to contrast, compare, reinforce or distort its various objects, scenes, and timeframes?
     
  2. In his helpful and lively poem guide, Stephen Burt notes that it might be difficult for readers to know when the poem is taking place, and to whom it is really addressed. How is Clare’s biography—his history of mental illness and confinement—part of this poem (they might be part of it by not being a part of it too)? Burt notes the “confined” vocabulary and “inverted” octave-sestet; how do images, even single words (the “now” in the opening line) generate or inflect meanings beyond the scope of the poem once you know something of Clare’s biography?
     
  3. This poem’s form lends itself to discussing a few advanced literary terms. Find this “topsy-turvy” sonnet’s volta. What themes or images does the line bring together, or push apart, and how? You might think about Clare’s use of caesura. 

  1. Taking the first writing idea as either a springboard or final product, develop a class around self-reference or “selfie” poetry. As a class gather instances of contemporary or older poets using their own names in poems (Bernadette Mayer’s poem is a great example); examples of poems that perform some other kind of self-portraiture (John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” or Afaa Michael Weaver’s “Self-Portrait”); and poems that name a self other than the poet (Eileen Myles’s “An American Poet”). Can the class come up with a taxonomy or rubric for selfie poems? What characteristics do they all share? What distinguishes these poems from one another? How does John Clare’s sonnet contribute or depart from this tradition? As a final exercise, you might ask students to write their own selfie poems, or, using the rubric you developed as a class, a blog post that describes the features of this trend, locates its history (in Clare’s poem), and speculates on its larger cultural meanings.
     
  2. It is difficult to talk about John Clare and not discuss mental illness. Depending on your students’ age, the dynamics of the group, and your own comfort level in discussing sensitive topics, your reading of Clare’s poem could lead out into a broader investigation into mental illness and poetry. Stephen Burt’s poem guide is a good place to start. Students might research Clare’s life further, looking at how readers have interpreted Clare’s poetry both during his lifetime and in the intervening centuries. Have ideas about poetry and mental illness changed over time? How do Clare’s readers index such changes? Students might extend their research into the 20th century—looking at work ranging from “Confessional poets” such as Berryman, Plath, Lowell, and Sexton to James Schuyler’s Payne-Whitney poems, John Wieners’s work, and the poetry of Bob Kaufman. Perhaps more important than tracking how mental illness is or is not present in poems themselves, students could look at biographical accounts and reviews, both contemporary and retrospective, and think about how mental illness and poetry have been perceived, and how those perceptions have changed over time. Another place to direct students is this Harriet blog post.