Thanks very much for this thread. I love Clare too. I had never read him much until about a year ago when (in the hospital with my wife, awaiting the birth of our son) I read aloud a New Yorker piece on him that I found very good. One detail I remember is that that writer said Clare was easily the poorest (economically, not aesthetically) of all the canonical English writers and then went into detail about his struggles to supply himself with ink and paper (sometimes bark) to write on. This poverty, combined with his excellence and his struggles with mental illness, adds a level of interest to the beautifully-observed poems for me.
[This message has been edited by Simon Hunt (edited February 27, 2005).]
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