Resurrecting a Poet.(John Clare)("I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare)(Book Review)

Bate, Jonathan. John Clare. Farrar. 2003. c.608p, illus. index. ISBN 0-374-17990-5. $35. LIT

"I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare. Farrar. 2003. c.256p. ed. by Jonathan Bate. index. ISBN 0-374-52869-1. pap. $14. POETRY

Best remembered for his descriptive nature writings and considered by many "the poet's poet," John Clare (1793-1864) never received recognition as a major Romantic poet. In his lengthy scholarly biography, well-known Shakespeare scholar Bate (The Genius of Shakespeare) draws on letters, journals, poems, and previous biographical accounts to reconstruct the life of this enigmatic working-class English poet. Focusing primarily on Clare's …