Transcript Normon MacCaig

Norman MacCaig
‘grand old man of Scottish poetry’
Context
• Born in Edinburgh,1910
• Pacifist, refused to fight in the war
• Had a second home is Assynt. The contrast between
Edinburgh and Assynt inspired his poetry (urban and
country)
• Part of the New Apocalypse Movement
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1939-1945 (WW2)
Emphasis on myth rather than rational narrative
Surrealist writing
He later left this movement in favour of more precise, witty
observations
• Best known for his humour and simplicity of language
in his poetry
Birds All Singing
• Modern view of nature
• Birdsong no longer romanticised. It’s an act of survival, to defend
territory (post Darwinism) ‘something to do with territory’
• Anti pastoral?
• Natural world governed by instincts. Not the harmonious vision in
traditional pastoral ‘woo no sweet or fair’
• Humans imposing limited views on natural world
• Both man and bird realise they own nothing as they
will die and ‘Time topples bird and man out of their
myth’
• Recognising a universe that is creative and destruction.
Shows nature and man sharing the delusion of
ownership of a world that will outlast them both.
Birds All Singing
Form and Structure
• Smith, I. ‘the poem proceeds…by argument…[it]
moves from concept to concept’
• Stanzas end in full stops, establishes an argument
• Conversation piece
• Uses an informal tone, wit and language to portray a serious
message
• Enjambment and caesura
• Eight sestets, rhyme scheme of abbcac. Iambic
pentameter, but fifth line of each stanza is iambic
trimeter
• Fluidity of metrical outline allows the poem to encompass
informal and elevated language
Birds All Singing
Language
• Rejecting romantic interpretation of birdsong
• ‘they woo no sweet and fair’
• ‘bumptious and absurd’
• ‘not passion but possession’
• ‘tenement windows of their sylvan slum’
• Paradox contrasts rural (sylvan) and urban (slum) brings the behaviour of
humans and birds closer together
• Man has his own private territory and imaginary possessions
• ‘private states of being’
• Bird and man compared in their misunderstanding. Both ‘lie in its
own lucidity’, without the clarity to see how ‘creation moves
restlessly’.
• Image of man ‘with stray of singing in his hair strolls in his bedlam’.
• Perhaps a madman or pastoral archetype?
• Madman unable to understand his place in the natural world.
An Ordinary Day
Main Themes/ Ideas
• “I took my mind a walk or my mind took me a
walk.” Either observing the natural world physically
or perhaps mentally (an escape to the pastoral
from the busy world).
• “The Ordinary” – how people pass by the
extraordinary things in life (e.g. the “Eastern
dances” of the long weeds etc) and regard them as
mere ordinary.
• Separation of the mind – “my mind observed to
me” emphasises the distance between the physical
being and the spiritual being.
An Ordinary Day
AO2
• Form – Free verse, meaning that there is no specific rhyme
scheme (“water, light, rock”) and that it potentially sounds
more like speech.
• Structure – Stanzas are structured evenly ( 8 tercets),
rhythmic quality is enhanced through repetition.
• Caesuras (for example, “stopping no traffic” - irony) allow
for a break in the line potentially to convey the sense of
observation that is consistent throughout the poem.
• Enjambment – (“unregarded, by shoals of darning
needles”) enhances the focus of the observation, or allows
time for thought.
• First and last stanzas – Introduction and Conclusion
An Ordinary Day
AO2
• Personification – (“Small flowers were doing their level
best”) accentuates the close relationship between man
and nature, however also perhaps emphasizes the
distance between body and mind (“my feet took me
home” – distinct separation)
• Use of the “antimetabole” technique is evident –
meaning that Maccaig repeats words such as “walk”
and “mind” to implore the reader to reflect. Reflection
in this case is focused on the extraordinary nature of
everyday things.
• Simplistic language – “light,” “water,” etc – conveys the
simplicity of the natural world.
An Ordinary Day
Pastoral (AO3)
• Mental/physical escape to the pastoral from the
urban world.
• Use of natural images – “cormorants stood on a tidal
rock – a sight that should amaze, however stops “no
traffic.”
• Idea that the doric lifestyle has perhaps become
mere ordinary, when it should really be viewed as
extraordinary.
An Ordinary Day
AO4
• Maccaig is well known for his simplistic language and
humour, which is widely seen throughout this poem
– “A cow started to moo, but thought better of it…”
• Reference to the modern world (particularly
transport) – “kerb bees like aerial charabancs
/stopping no traffic.” This perhaps implies that the
natural world cannot escape interference from
industrialization .
Sparrow
AO3 Pastoral
• Pastoral imagery of birds and setting
• ‘Lawns’, ‘midnight trees’, ‘gray Atlantics’
• Underlying theme of status. Comparing sparrow to
other birds. Sparrow is more practical, other birds are
creative (‘dancers’, ‘musicians’, ‘architects’)
• Higher class jobs
• Comparison of working class is reflected in phrase- ‘a
proletarian bird’- link to ‘slum’, ‘punch up in a gutter’.
• Post- pastoral elements- creative/destructive universe,
what happens to humanity is paralleled to nature‘nature as culture and culture as nature’
Sparrow
AO2
• Personification
• ‘clothes’, ‘writing’, ‘ballet dancers’
• Winter- personified as a dancer, ‘soft-shoe shuffle’
• Semantic field of education
• ‘no scholar’, ‘whose result’, ‘O-levels and A-levels’
• Colloquialisms compared to formal language
• ‘Stalk, sing, glide’, ‘punch-up in a gutter’
• Second stanza- repetition, alliteration, elevated
language- all in first 3 lines.
• ‘solitary’ repeated 3 times.
• ‘stalk solitary’, ‘sing solitary’ – alliteration.
Sparrow
AO2
• Form- free verse?
• Structure- four stanzas of unequal length,
rhythmic flow obtained by language, sentence
variation and enjambment.
Sources
• http://learning.royallatin.bucks.sch.uk/course/
view.php?id=525
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00mr8yj
/profiles/norman-maccaig
• ZigZag Education, 2010