National 5/ Higher English
The Poetry of Norman MacCaig
For National 5 and Higher English, you will study literature throughout the course. Firstly, and most importantly, you should read literature for a sense of enjoyment and to engage with writers’ ideas. You will learn to understand how writers use language for a range of purposes. Also, by responding to literature you will develop the ability to communicate your own thoughts and feelings.
This Unit examines the poetry of Norman MacCaig. You will examine and evaluate the key ideas of the poems and then compare and contrast them. Additionally you will learn to read critically and analyse how the writer has made them effective pieces of literature. After examining the skills required to write effective poetry, you should begin to use these skills in your own creative writing.
Critical Reading
The second part of the National 5 and Higher examination paper requires you to answer questions on previously studied Scottish texts. These six poems by MacCaig are on the list so you will need to know them all well. You will need to know an extensive range of quotations from the texts but it is not enough to just learn the poems or to repeat learned notes in the exam.
The most successful pupils will have a strong understanding of the texts and engage positively with the ideas and themes the poems. You should try to develop an understanding and appreciation of MacCaig as a writer and the contribution he has made to literature.
The Scottish Text Section of the exam will be worth 20 marks (1/5th of your total mark).
You will be given an entire poem (or section of a poem) from the list. Then you will be asked a number of questions based on the text given. Thesewill test your understanding, analysis and evaluation of the text.
The final question will ask you to compare the poem given to others in the list of MacCaig’s poems. It is likely that you will be asked to compare and contrast his handling of a theme across a range of texts. The comparative question may be worth around 8 marks. If you use the Poetry of MacCaig in the Scottish Text section, then you may not write a critical essay on poetry in the other section of the Critical Reading Paper.
Sounds of the Day
When a clatter came,
It was horses crossing the ford.
When the air creaked, it was
A lapwing seeing us off the premises
Of its private marsh. A snuffling puff
Ten yards from the boat was the tide blocking,
Unblocking a hole in a rock.
When the black drums rolled, it was water
Falling sixty feet into itself.
When the door
Scraped shut, it was the end
Of all the sounds there are.
You left me
Beside the quietest fire in the world.
I thought I was hurt in my pride only,
Forgetting that,
When you plunge your hand in freezing water,
You feel
A bangle of ice around your wrist
Before the whole hand goes numb.
Annotating a poem – Sounds of the Day
When looking at a poem for the first time, ask yourself some basic questions.
- What is the situation?What happens in the poem?
- Who is the speaker?
- Is there anything about the poem that you don’t understand?
Write notes down one side of the poem about the main ideas. Be as detailed and accurate as you can and don’t make vague statements.
On the other side of the poem, make notes on the techniques used to make the poem work. Try to tie these in with the key ideas. It is not enough just to spot techniques from the list below- you need to explain how they contribute to the main ideas of the poem. No single poem will use them all and there may well be techniques used not in the list.
1
Simile
Metaphor
Imagery
Figurative and literal use of language
Onomatopoeia
Alliteration
Personification
Paradox
Juxtaposition
Oxymoron
Theme / Central Concern(s)
Rhythm
Rhyme
Symbolism
Pace
Purpose / audience
Voice or persona
Tone
Genre
Register, dialect, vernacular, syntax, accent, slang
Characterisation
Setting
Structure
Plot, narrative
Conflict, action, unusual characters, turning points
Title
Opening
Resolution
Climax
Monologue
Atmosphere & mood
Anecdote
Contrast
1
Some points to consider - Sounds of the Day
The title of the poem clearly leads us to think of the importance of sound. Which of the poetry techniques particularly explore the sounds of words?
Note all of the sounds in the poem. Refer to the thoughts and feelings and ideas associated with the sound.
What other senses does MacCaig refer to in the text?
Where does the action of the poem take place? In what way is this effective in portraying the key ideas of the poem?
Explain how the structure of the poem adds to its impact. Where does the turning point exist?
Why is the conclusion of the poem effective?
Background reading - Assisi
St Francis of Assisi was born in Italy circa 1181.
After fighting in a battle between Assisi and Perugia, Francis was captured and imprisoned for ransom. He spent nearly a year in prison—awaiting his father's ransom—and, during this time, reportedly began receiving visions from God. After his release from prison, Francis said that he heard the voice of Christ, who told him to repair corruptions within the Christian Church and live a life of poverty.
He abandoned his life of luxury and devoted his life to Christianity. Later in life, Francis reportedly received a vision that left him with the stigmata of Christ—marks resembling the wounds Jesus suffered when he was crucified—making Francis the first person to receive the holy wounds of the stigmata. He was canonized as a saint on July 16, 1228. Today, St. Francis of Assisi has had a lasting resonance, with millions of followers across the globe. He is the Patron Saint of animals and The Poor.
Adapted from
In the Umbrian village of Assisi there is an important church dedicated to him. This is now a World Heritage Site and a major tourist attraction.
The inside of the Church is decorated with frescoes, paintings and works of art by many famous Renaissance artists including Giotto. The aim of the frescoes was to bring Bible stories to life and to teach those who could not read or write the Bible’s message.
Assisi
The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.
A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child's when she speaks to her mother
or a bird's when it spoke
to St Francis.
Analysing the poem – Assisi
Firstly, ask yourself the basic questions about the text.
Who is talking? What is the situation? . . . etc
Make notes on the poem in the same way as you did previously in “Sounds of the Day”. This time you may want to add some colour coding or some means of marking his attitude to different ideas in the poem. For example:
- How does MacCaig describe the disabled beggar at the start of the poem?
- In what way does this view differ by the end of the poem?
- What is his opinion of the Priest?
- How does MacCaig describe the tourists?
Active Learning
Extra Reading
You will find a useful annotation of the poem on the BBC website revision section called “Booknotes”. Once you have registered for this site you can use it to help you clarify your own ideas. There are lots of other helpful MacCaig resourceson the Bitesize section too.
A worked example – showing the level of detail expected in written answers
Towards the ending of the poem, MacCaig uses the metaphor of a “ruined temple” to describe his central character. A “temple” is an important religious building and has connotations of honour and dignity. The adjective “ruined” helps us understand the nature of his infirmities. When combined, these words help us understand that MacCaig feels that the disabled beggar should command as much respect as anyone. Additionally, the metaphor comparing him to a building reminds the reader of the elaborate Basilica built in honour of St Francis. Ironically, St Francis was “brother/ of the poor” and yet the disabled man waits outside the church building being ignored by tourists, the Priest and an institution who refuse to acknowledge his poverty.
Now answer these questions with the same level of detail:
1)How does MacCaig use language effectively to show criticism of the Priest? (4)
2)How does MacCaig use language effectively to show his disapproval of the tourists? (4)
3)Explain how MacCaig uses irony in the poem. (4)
Beginning to look for comparisons and contrasts
You have now studied “Sounds of the Day” and “Assisi”. Write about 100 words describing the nature of MacCaig’s own personality coming from these texts. You may want to consider:
- Someone who reflects on incidents
- Someone who comes across as compassionate
- Someone who notices small details
You should refer to both poems but don’t micro-analyse. This type of commentary should not be explaining effective use of word choice or imagery in fine detail. The aim is to express your ideas about the central concerns of these texts.
Critical Thinking
A more complex comparison
Show how MacCaig uses structure effectively in these two texts. Explain how he uses the final few lines of each poem to create a surprise ending which, in fact, reveals the central idea of the text. Both poems end very differently, yet they use the same technique.
Visiting Hour
The hospital smell
combs my nostrils
as they go bobbing along
green and yellow corridors.
What seems a corpse
is trundled into a lift and vanishes
heavenward.
I will not feel, I will not
feel, until
I have to.
Nurses walk lightly, swiftly,
here and up and down and there,
their slender waists miraculously
carrying their burden
of so much pain, so
many deaths, their eyes
still clear after
so many farewells.
Ward 7. She lies
in a white cave of forgetfulness.
A withered hand
trembles on its stalk. Eyes move
behind eyelids too heavy
to raise. Into an arm wasted
of colour a glass fang is fixed,
not guzzling but giving.
And between her and me
distance shrinks till there is none left
but the distance of pain that neither she nor I
can cross.
She smiles a little at this
black figure in her white cave
who clumsily rises
in the round swimming waves of a bell
and dizzily goes off, growing fainter,
not smaller, leaving behind only
books that will not be read
and fruitless fruits.
Analysing the poem- Visiting Hour
You can hear Norman MacCaig introducing the poem and reading it at:
Use the same technique for studying the poem as you used in the other poems. Comment on the main ideas and also make notes on the techniques used. Remember the need for developed statement and detail.
Now you are going to evaluate the techniques used in the poem. In order to this, you need to generate an opinion about which techniques are most effective. You can present your findings visually. Use a triangle:
Put the techniques that you consider to be most important in the poem at the bottom of the triangle. Think of them as the base – holding up the text. At the top place those which are still valid but only worth a small reference.
Memorial
Everywhere she dies. Everywhere I go she dies.
No sunrise, no city square, no lurking beautiful mountain
but has her death in it.
The silence of her dying sounds through
the carousel of language. It’s a web
on which laughter stitches itself. How can my hand
clasp another’s when between them
is that thick death, that intolerable distance?
She grieves for my grief. Dying, she tells me
that bird dives from the sun, that fish
leaps into it. No crocus is carved more gently
than the way her dying
shapes my mind. – But I hear, too,
the other words,
black words that make the sound
of soundlessness, that name the nowhere
she is continuously going into.
Ever since she died
she can’t stop dying. She makes me
her elegy. I am a walking masterpiece,
a true fiction
of the ugliness of death.
I am her sad music.
Analysing the poem – Memorial
Look at the BBC website:
Here you will find some background information about MacCaig and his writing. There is a short clip by Seamus Heaney and also a clip by MacCaig about his early poetry.To conclude you should listen to the clip where MacCaig talks about the impact of death on his work.
Active Learning
What kind of poet is MacCaig?
This is a very intense personal lyric.
- Explain the impact that the death has had on MacCaig.
- Despite the intense grief, there are some ways in which someone’s death acts as a positive influence. What are they? What imagery does MacCaig use to highlight these?
Looking at opinions about writers
Norman MacCaig was a man of many words
The HerALD Monday 1 November 2010
Alan Taylor salutes the Scottish poet on the centenary of his birth.
The surface simplicity of MacCaig’s poetry is deceptive. What concerns him, it seems, is how a man relates to the world around him and how he makes sense of what he sees and who he is and what is his place in the universe. The poems are personal, as all poetry intrinsically is, but they are not confessional or sentimental or narcissistic. They are his response to whatever impresses itself upon him. Later, however, as various friends died, he could not resist the urge to memorialise them or to articulate his hatred of death.
Extended Writing- responding to literary criticism
Write a short essay of about 200 words showing how this view of MacCaig is true of the poem “Memorial”. 50.881677 4.735157
Aunt Julia
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
I could not answer her —
I could not understand her.
She wore men's boots
when she wore any.
— I can see her strong foot,
stained with peat,
paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel
while her right hand drew yarn
marvellously out of the air.
Hers was the only house
where I've lain at night
in a box bed, listening to
crickets being friendly.
She was buckets
and water flouncing into them.
She was winds pouring wetly
round house-ends.
She was brown eggs, black skirts
and a keeper of threepennybits
in a teapot.
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic
very loud and very fast.
By the time I had learned
a little, she lay
silenced in the absolute black
of a sandy grave
at Luskentyre.
But I hear her still, welcoming me
with a seagull's voice
across a hundred yards
of peatscrapes and lazybeds
and getting angry, getting angry
with so many questions
unanswered.
Analysing the text- Aunt Julia
Active Learning
Before you answer the questions do some background research of your own.
Some information on crofting life can be found at:
The mention of Luskentyre clearly identifies the poem’s setting as the Isle of Harris which is where is mother was from. MacCaig’s childhood visits to Harris had a profound impact on his writing. You can see images of Luskentyre at:
By now, your reading of MacCaig’s background may have led you to see the extent of his highland roots- he said of himself that he was three-quarter Gael yet he had little knowledge of Gaelic and this idea is central to the poem. You should do some research on the history of Gaelic language in Scotland and you can find out more at:
Examination questions- Aunt Julia
1)Describe his abiding memories of Aunt Julia. What impression of her personality does he create? Justify your answer with reference to the text. (4)