SOURCE: "How to See Things with Words: Language Use and Descriptive Art in John Clare's 'Signs of Winter,'" in Language and Style, Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring, 1987, pp. 91-109.

In the following excerpt, Herman argues that contrary to popular critical belief, John Clare crafted his poems meticulously with the intention of achieving vivid images and heightened responses.

That John Clare was a descriptive poet every reader of his poems would agree. That his descriptive skill was an unalloyed asset to his poetic art is a much more contentious issue. Thus, even the more enthusiastic appreciations of Clare's descriptive art are tempered with reservations, which echo Keats's observations as conveyed to Clare by John Taylor, that "the Description overlaid and stifled that which ought to be the Prevailing Idea."

John Middleton Murry, while endorsing Clare's "faculty of sheer vision" that he deems to be "unique in English poetry," remarks that...