Clare, Keats, Shelley Flashcards
What does Stanley Plumly call ‘To Autumn’
‘perhaps the purest poem in the English language’
When was Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ published?
1820
What is the only imperative Keats uses in ‘To Autumn’?
‘Think not of’ the ‘songs of Spring’
What does the Soul consist of, according to Keats in a letter to his brother George in October 1818?
‘atoms of perception’
What does Keats say about composition in a letter to John Taylor in February 1818?
‘if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all’
When was ‘When I have fears’ written?
January 1818
When was Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ published?
1820
What does the wind carry in ‘Ode to the West Wind’?
‘The winged seeds’
When was Shelley’s ‘Defence of Poetry’ published?
1821
What metaphor does Shelley use for creativity in ‘Defence of Poetry’?
‘the mind in creation is a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness’
What is poetry like, according to Shelley’s ‘Defence of Poetry’?
‘root and blossom of thought’
Though creativity is transient, what are creations, according to the ‘Defence of Poetry’?
‘immortal compositions’
When was ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ published?
1819
What does John Taylor say in a letter to John Clare, March 1826, about revision of poems?
‘What in me is low, Raise & refine’
What does Clare say about people who enforce grammar?
they ‘cut it into classes and orders as the student does the animal or vegetable creation’
What does Clare refer to his thoughts as in ‘The Flitting’?
‘weedlings wild’
What line in ‘The Flitting’ exposes the paradox of writing about nature?
‘een this little shepherds purse / Grieves me to cut it up’
What poetic sketch from 1808-9 shows Clare’s anxieties about assumption of the identity of poet?
‘To fancy one that dug in ditches / Might work on mount parnassus’
What is peculiar about Clare’s poem ‘On Labour’?
It doesn’t depict any acts of labour, just observing
What does Eric Robinson say about John Clare that needs interrogation?
He is ‘the most accessible of poets’
What does Keats say to John Taylor in a letter in February 1818?
‘It is a sorry thing for me that any one should have to overcome Prejudices in reading my Verses’
What is the first kind of pleasure, according to Clare?
‘one arises from cultivation of the mind’, which is ‘least liable to change’
What is the second, more common pleasure, according to Clare?
‘the more common pleasures are found by the many like beautiful weeds in the wilderness’, ‘they are of natural growth and tho very beautiful to the eye are only annuals’
What does Sara Guyer say about editing Clare and claims of authenticity?
‘No position within these debates can do without positing Clare’s authentic voice as the grounds for their claim. Their ethical force depends on this fiction of voice, this act of presentation.’
