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The Poems of Norman MacCaig
By the time of his death in January 1996, Norman MacCaig was known widely as the grand old man of Scottish poetry, honoured by an OBE and the Queen's Medal for Poetry. This book is the third edition of "MacCaig's Collected Poems" and is edited by his son Ewen. With 778 poems, 100 of them previously unpublished, this is a remarkable collection.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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237 people want to read
About the author
Norman MacCaig
55 books26 followersMacCaig was born in Edinburgh and divided his time, for the rest of his life, between his native city and Assynt in the Scottish Highlands. He registered as a conscientious objector during World War II. In 1967 he was appointed Fellow in Creative Writing at Edinburgh. He became a reader in poetry in 1970, at the University of Stirling.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 30, 2014
MacCaig spent 40 summers in Assynt, in the northwest of Scotland, and wrote poetry that will change the way you look at the landscape, its wildlife and people. He was the master of sharp, clear and exquisite observation about the natural world, and of drawing philosophical depths out of those clear waters. Marvellous.
March 4, 2007
The finest scottish poet of them all. And he knew Garry's grandfather !
August 17, 2019
Another, longer collection from my favourite poet. Always find something new in reading his stuff and often am reminded of poems I haven’t read in years.
July 12, 2019
N.B. I tapped out after 1956, dipping in to the poems of the 60’s and 70’s.
Poetry in a language that feels heavily numerical; a numeracy that weighs down the emotion(s).
There is a sense, reading his work as a whole, that he was going above and beyond to squeeze his poetics through strict structures.
For what purpose...? For the answer, look at his beginnings: especially the motifs around ‘ghosts’ and ghostliness.
There is no strength in facing this/these ghost(s), instead poetic techniques - particularly caesura and alliteration, etc., are hammered into stanzas that feel preconceived to the point of opaqueness.
1940’s - the theme is personifying nature (as a tribute to it/to experience of it) but there is no visit from any gods apart from the most fleetingly light encounters - coincidentally, in a poem of the same name, Inspiration appears.
1950’s - the early 50's are characterised by a struggle - a harsh wrestle - to marry the landscape to words. All other impetus and concern drops by the wayside; doesn't drop but is readily sacrificed with a frothing drive. (There is no reflection).
In 1955, metaphysics appear, some poetry had improved too - ‘Roses and thorns’ and ‘Particular you’ sit and also marry well (perhaps foreshadowed by 1953’s ‘Summer farm’). There is also an oddity in ‘Ballade of good whisky’ - there is a comic element to this poem that gives it a warmth and fire lacking in the majority of other ‘more serious’ poems. (Would it be rude to suggest MacCaig may have missed a truer calling?)
On the other hand, there are the likes of ‘Celtic twilight’ in this year and in the following two: lines where there the continuing struggle to merge words with the landscape takes a harsh, leaden turn - ‘This incandescent hush of water is / Neither one sentence nor parenthesis.’ Cue more tired personification of the sky, the wind, etc. None of it colourised, all of it always mentioned generically. There is an overall lack of buoyancy in the imagery of this poetry (from 1947 to 1957, at least).
It depends the purpose and audience: if it’s to inspire further reading of poetry, this is unlikely to do that, however it is great stuff for having kids create a list of techniques then a list of comments regarding them, which is generally the way English seems to have been taught in schools for decades.
This volume is handy for providing the context to the North American poetry that is commonly studied - children could read ‘Circle Line’, ‘Last night in New York’, ‘Leaving the Museum of Modern Art’ and ‘Writers’ conference, Long Island University’ to get a better understanding of the context in which those poems were written. For anyone looking for words to fire a landscape or sense of experience in their mind... not so much.
Poetry in a language that feels heavily numerical; a numeracy that weighs down the emotion(s).
There is a sense, reading his work as a whole, that he was going above and beyond to squeeze his poetics through strict structures.
For what purpose...? For the answer, look at his beginnings: especially the motifs around ‘ghosts’ and ghostliness.
There is no strength in facing this/these ghost(s), instead poetic techniques - particularly caesura and alliteration, etc., are hammered into stanzas that feel preconceived to the point of opaqueness.
1940’s - the theme is personifying nature (as a tribute to it/to experience of it) but there is no visit from any gods apart from the most fleetingly light encounters - coincidentally, in a poem of the same name, Inspiration appears.
1950’s - the early 50's are characterised by a struggle - a harsh wrestle - to marry the landscape to words. All other impetus and concern drops by the wayside; doesn't drop but is readily sacrificed with a frothing drive. (There is no reflection).
In 1955, metaphysics appear, some poetry had improved too - ‘Roses and thorns’ and ‘Particular you’ sit and also marry well (perhaps foreshadowed by 1953’s ‘Summer farm’). There is also an oddity in ‘Ballade of good whisky’ - there is a comic element to this poem that gives it a warmth and fire lacking in the majority of other ‘more serious’ poems. (Would it be rude to suggest MacCaig may have missed a truer calling?)
On the other hand, there are the likes of ‘Celtic twilight’ in this year and in the following two: lines where there the continuing struggle to merge words with the landscape takes a harsh, leaden turn - ‘This incandescent hush of water is / Neither one sentence nor parenthesis.’ Cue more tired personification of the sky, the wind, etc. None of it colourised, all of it always mentioned generically. There is an overall lack of buoyancy in the imagery of this poetry (from 1947 to 1957, at least).
It depends the purpose and audience: if it’s to inspire further reading of poetry, this is unlikely to do that, however it is great stuff for having kids create a list of techniques then a list of comments regarding them, which is generally the way English seems to have been taught in schools for decades.
This volume is handy for providing the context to the North American poetry that is commonly studied - children could read ‘Circle Line’, ‘Last night in New York’, ‘Leaving the Museum of Modern Art’ and ‘Writers’ conference, Long Island University’ to get a better understanding of the context in which those poems were written. For anyone looking for words to fire a landscape or sense of experience in their mind... not so much.
November 21, 2020
Norman MacCaig is quiet poet. His work doesn't scream feelings or bash you on the head with ideas. He draws beautiful pictures of nature and links them seamlessly with humanity. He writes about people with insight whilst still according them grace.
I love his work, but I think this is my favourite. If you've not read his work I would urge you to do so.
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.
I love his work, but I think this is my favourite. If you've not read his work I would urge you to do so.
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.
August 21, 2017
I go back to Norman MacCaig again and again. It's hard to define exactly what makes his poetry so special. i think it's something to do with the conversational lightness of touch (I don't know how much of this is due to the fact that he apparently wrote quickly and didn't change much).
March 3, 2018
The other book I'm reading, which deals with ones place in the landscape among other themes related to walking/rambling, brought MacCaig's poem " A Man in Assynt" immediately to mind , so I had to detour to revisit this wonderful work.
July 20, 2022
To understand, to read
I love Norman MacCaig's poetry. Sometimes I'm puzzled, sometimes I smirk, sometimes I laugh. God words, nevertheless, are food, delicious food for thought!
I love Norman MacCaig's poetry. Sometimes I'm puzzled, sometimes I smirk, sometimes I laugh. God words, nevertheless, are food, delicious food for thought!
August 1, 2023
He's poetry to me, to steal a quote from Roger McGough 💙
March 16, 2025
I have had this collection of MacCaig's poems sitting beside me for a couple of months now. Dipping in and out of it, I read through it chronologically as the poems are presented, which allows you an overview of his progression as a poet from the more formal metre of his earlier work, to looser poems contemplating loss and memory in his later years.
Recurrent subjects are observations from the lochans and mountains of Assynt and from the streets of Edinburgh, two places where he passed most of his days. He manages to capture the image of a bird or a stream in a few short verses more effectively than anyone else I have read, filling a gap he identified himself.
His landscapes aren't dead puzzles being observed under a microscope, but living breathing entities, with people in them that give us perspective and insight. I have bent over so many corners of this book to take me back to memorable poems, images and phrases. I will return to it again and again.
Recurrent subjects are observations from the lochans and mountains of Assynt and from the streets of Edinburgh, two places where he passed most of his days. He manages to capture the image of a bird or a stream in a few short verses more effectively than anyone else I have read, filling a gap he identified himself.
Scholars, I plead with you,
Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?
His landscapes aren't dead puzzles being observed under a microscope, but living breathing entities, with people in them that give us perspective and insight. I have bent over so many corners of this book to take me back to memorable poems, images and phrases. I will return to it again and again.
January 7, 2012
His sheer mastery of natural history, particularly birds cannot be surpassed !!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews