Impromptu

John Clare was a farm laborer who became one of the most passionate voices in English poetry, and "Impromptu" captures the raw, unmediated force of his gift. Written in the tradition of spontaneous verse, the poem distills Clare's intimate knowledge of the English countryside and the lives of those who work it. Here is a poet who knew the weight of a scythe, the smell of lime burning, the freedom of traveling with Gypsies, and who translated all of it into language that still vibrates with urgency two centuries later. The title itself suggests something caught in flight, a poem that arrived unannounced and refused to be tamed. Clare's later years were spent in asylums, where his doctor famously attributed his breakdown to "poetical prosing" - a tragic irony for a man who could not stop making art from his suffering. This is poetry written by someone who lived at the margins and saw what others missed.