Mary Oliver

That Sweet Flute John Clare

death free verse dark

That Sweet Flute John Clare - meaning Summary

Art Beside Despair

The poem gathers artists and writers associated with mental illness, breakdown, isolation, or suicide, placing John Clare's lyric gift beside lives marked by suffering. The speaker includes a family suicide among these cultural figures, making the list both literary and personal. Its final plea to the "light of the world" suggests a need for protection or grace in the face of inherited and witnessed despair.

Read Complete Analyses

That sweet flute John Clare; that broken branch Eddy Whitman; Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity; My uncle the suicide; Woolf, on her way to the river; Wolf, of the sorrowful songs; Swift, impenetrable mask of Dublin; Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine; Ruskin, Cowper; Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond - light of the world, hold me

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