I Am (poem)

I Am (poem)

I Am (or Lines: I Amcite web
url=http://www.olimu.com/Readings/IAm.htm
title=I Am
author=John Derbyshire
publisher=John Derbyshire
accessdate=2007-12-19
] ) is a poem written by John Clare in late 1844 or 1845 and published in 1848. It was composed when Clare was in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum [cite web
url=http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/4_13_TA.htm
title=Mental Health History (Hospitals)
author=Andrew Roberts
publisher=Middlesex University
accessdate=2007-12-19
Materials for the author's thesis.
] (commonly Northampton County Asylum, and later renamed St Andrews Hospital), isolated by his mental affliction from his family and friends.

The poem, written in three stanzas of regular iambic pentameter and an "ababbb" rhyme scheme in the first stanza and an "ababcc" scheme for the second and third, details Clare's finding of a sanctuary from the travails of his life in the Asylum by reasserting his individuality in life [cite web |url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=894 |title=Literary Encyclopedia: John Clare |accessdate=2007-12-20 |last=Miller |first=Eric |coauthors= |date=2002-03-21 |work=The Literary Encyclopedia |publisher=The Literary Dictionary Company] 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 plays at one point.

The second stanza examines the alienation he feels from his family and friends due to his mental condition "Even 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 dreaming of 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 1 January 1848 in the Bedford "Times", 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.cite web
url=http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/479.html
title=John Clare (1793-1864): I Am!
work=Representative Poetry Online
publisher=University of Toronto Library
accessdate=2007-12-19
] The poem is known as Clare's "last lines" and is his most famous.cite news
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E7D7133BF936A25751C0A9629C8B63
title=Nature Boy
author=Terrence Rafferty
date=February 15, 2004
publisher=The New York Times
accessdate=2007-12-19
]

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 [cite book
title=I Am: The Selected Poetry of John Clare
author=John Clare
others=Jonathan Bate
publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux
year=2003
isbn=0374528691
] , and it was included in the 1992 Columbia University Press anthology, "The Top 500 Poems" [cite book
title=The Top 500 Poems
author=William Harmon
publisher=Columbia University Press
year=1992
isbn=023108028X
] .

The poem is not to be confused with a sonnet also written by Clare and also titled "I Am" (or "I Only Know I Am", or "Sonnet: I Am"). The latter may, however, "be seen as a complementary piece". [cite book
title=Comfort
author=Christopher Howse
year=2004
publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group
isbn=0826476414
quote= [first lines] I feel I am, I only know I am / And plod upon the earth as dull and void
]

References

External links

* [http://www.slate.com/id/3443 1998 reading of poem] by Robert Pinsky, then U.S. Poet Laureate - Slate.com
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/timeline/alternative.shtml?john_clare1848 BBC reading]


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