I Am (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Clare
- First Published: 1848
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Children, Self, Alienation, Personality, Sea or seafaring life, Shipwrecks, Loneliness, Life, philosophy of, Consciousness
The Poem
“I Am” is a short poem of three six-line stanzas. Each stanza is regular iambic pentameter, rhyming ababab. The verse form is slightly unusual, not surprisingly for John Clare who experimented freely with different meters and forms. The poem begins with the simplest assertion of identity—“I am.” The reader knows only the bare fact of the speaker’s existence—no particulars are given. One does not learn who this speaker is and what his specific conditions are, though one is told in the first stanza that the speaker is friendless and forsaken. This...
[The entire page is 1558 words long]
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