comment-Life As An Echo-2 Life As An Echo

As the "peasant poet", it is interesting how some publishers like Knight and Tibble attempted to refine the grammar and spelling of Clare, altering I Am to make it look more polished. As Zach notes, Clare wrote the poem in a very "ad hoc" style, making Robinson's more "authentic" text, which scholars of the 20th century condemned as "represent(ing) Clare too much as the uneducated poet, and thus tak(ing) away from the content and readability of his work." If Clare wrote this with a freewheeling (albeit insane) mindset, the "missplaced" commas may actually indicate an internal rhythm that was pulsing through his chaotic and mad synapses. Whatever the case, Zach offers an interesting snapshot of the background which made "I Am" a difficult poem to publish; considering how the original "manuscript" consisted of random bits of illegible scribblings, it was a amazing that any publisher could decipher and represent the work of Clare to a public reading audience.