Norman MacCaig

1. Norman MacCaig ‘grand old man of Scottish poetry’

2. 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 • 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

3. 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.

4. Birds All SingingForm 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

5. Birds All SingingLanguage • 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.

6. An Ordinary DayMain 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.

7. An Ordinary DayAO2 • 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

8. An Ordinary DayAO2 • 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.

9. An Ordinary DayPastoral (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.

10. An Ordinary DayAO4 • 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 .

11. SparrowAO3 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’

12. SparrowAO2 • 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.

13. SparrowAO2 • Form- free verse? • Structure- four stanzas of unequal length, rhythmic flow obtained by language, sentence variation and enjambment.

14. 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