National 5Poetry

Norman MacCaig

Name:___________________________________1

ContentsAbout the poet………………………………………………………………………………………2Poetic techniques………………………………………………………………………………….3How to analyse a poem…………………………………………………………………………4Visiting Hour………………………………………………………………………………………….5Assisi……………………………………………………………………………………………………..7Aunt Julia……………………………………………………………………………………………..9Memorial …………………………………………………………………………………………….11Basking Shark ……………………………………………………………………………………..13Sounds of the Day……………………………………………………………………………….15Final Group Task………………………………………………………………………………….17

About the Poet

Norman MacCaig was born in Edinburgh in 1910. Although he spent his life in the capital, his mother's Highland past influenced him greatly. She was from 2

Scalpay on Harris and her Gaelic heritage had an enduring effect on MacCaig.

MacCaig went to the Royal High school and then Edinburgh University. He became a primary school teacher. MacCaig then went on to teach at university in 1967.

Most of his poetry is divided between two Scottish locations: Edinburgh and his holiday home of Assynt (a remote area in the North-West of Scotland).

MacCaig’s poetry began as part of the “New Apocalypse Movement”, a surreal style of writing which he later abandoned for more precise and witty observations.

As he became older, MacCaig's fame spread and he received such honours as the O.B.E. and the Queen's Medal for Poetry. By the time of his death in January 1996, Norman MacCaig was known widely as the grand old man of Scottish poetry.

Critical TerminologyTechnique Definition Example

Simile“A withered hand trembles on its stalk.”

Giving a non human thing a human quality

ImageryWord ChoiceRhythm

When the ends of two or more words have the same sound

“Rat” and “bat”“Ball “and “hall”

Words that sound as they meanThe train trundled along the track

ContrastForm Elegy, sonnet, ballad

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StructureEnjambment “Ever since she died

She can’t stop dying.”When a line of poetry is a sentence on its own.

RepetitionSymbolism A heart = love

An anchor = hopeThe big idea of a textThe surrounding feeling.

Mood

How to Analyse a Poem

Step 1:Decide what the poem is about and who is speakingStep 2:Identify the themes and messages of the poem.

- Why has the poet written this?- What is the poet trying to say?- If the poem gives an opinion about something

Step 3:Identify the attitudes and feeling expressed.

- What are the different emotions of the poet/ narrator?- What is the mood or atmosphere of the poem?- Is the poet trying to make you feel something?

Step 4:Identify the techniques used in the poem.

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- Annotate the poem to show the different techniques used by the poet. You should consider all techniques used on the previous page.

- For each technique consider what images, ideas and feelings it creates. Do this on a copy of the poem or as below.

Quote Technique

Images Ideas Personal Response

“A withered hand trembles on its stalk.”(Visiting Hour)

Metaphor The hand is compared to a leaf about to fall off its branch. This creates a picture of a veined, weak and almost lifeless hand shaking.

The patient was once healthy but now her life is dwindling as she becomes weaker.

Sad about the frailty of life.Sympathy for the visitor for whom this must be an upsetting sight.

Visiting Hour

The hospital smellcombs my nostrilsas they go bobbing alonggreen and yellow corridors.

What seems a corpseis trundled into a lift and vanishesheavenward.

I will not feel, I will notfeel, untilI have to.

Nurses walk lightly, swiftly,here and up and down and there,their slender waists miraculouslycarrying their burdenof so much pain, somany deaths, their eyesstill clear afterso many farewells.

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Ward 7. She liesin a white cave of forgetfulness.A withered handtrembles on its stalk. Eyes movebehind eyelids too heavyto raise. Into an arm wastedof colour a glass fang is fixed,not guzzling but giving.And between her and medistance shrinks till there is none leftbut the distance of pain that neither she nor Ican cross.

She smiles a little at thisblack figure in her white cavewho clumsily risesin the round swimming waves of a belland dizzily goes off, growing fainter,not smaller, leaving behind onlybooks that will not be readand fruitless fruits.

Task 1:

In groups carry out the four steps of how to analyse a poem. Each member of the group should makes notes in their jotters on each of the four steps.

Task 2:

Textual Analysis

1. Many of the main ideas or concerns of the poem come across clearly in the first two stanzas.

(a)Identify two of these main ideas or concerns from stanza one and two.

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(b) Show how two examples of the poet’s use of language in stanza one and two help to clarify or illustrate his meaning.

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2. Identify any structural technique used in stanza three and explain how it demonstrates the writer’s mood.

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3. Show how any two examples of the poet’s use of language in stanza four effectively contribute to the main ideas or concerns of the poem.

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4. Identify two examples of imagery in stanza three and explain how these contribute to the concerns of the poem.

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5. How effective do you find any aspect of the final stanza as a conclusion to the poem?

Your answer might deal with ideas and and/or language.4

Assisi

The dwarf with his hands on backwardssat, slumped like a half-filled sackon tiny twisted legs from whichsawdust might run,outside the three tiers of churches builtin honor of St Francis, brotherof the poor, talker with birds, over whomhe had the advantageof not being dead yet.

A priest explainedhow clever it was of Giottoto make his frescoes tell stories

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that would reveal to the illiterate the goodnessof God and the sufferingof His Son. I understoodthe explanation andthe cleverness.

A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,fluttered after him as he scatteredthe grain of the Word. It was they who had passedthe ruined temple outside, whose eyeswept pus, whose back was higherthan his head, whose lopsided mouthsaid Grazie in a voice as sweetas a child's when she speaks to her motheror a bird's when it spoketo St Francis.

Vocabulary

Giotto - an Italian painter and architect.

Frescoes - a painting done on a wall.

Task 1

Considering the four steps of analysing a poem, annotate your copy of Assisi.Your teacher will review this with you.

Task 2

Textual Analysis

1. What four things mentioned in the poem show that the beggar is disabled?

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2. Select a piece of imagery from stanza 1 and explain what it tells us about Assisi.2

3. a) What tone is used in the final line of stanza 1?1

b) How does this line show how unfortunate Assisi is?1

4. According to stanza 2 what was the purpose of Giotto’s frescoes?

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5. In the final stanza what image is created of the tourists and why is this appropriate. 4

6. Why is the metaphor “ruined temple” an appropriate way to describe Assisi?2

7. What message is MacCaig trying to communicate in the final 4 lines of the poem?4

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

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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.

VocabularyGaelic – any one of a number of Celtic languages spoken throughout the British Isles.Threepenny bit – a coin worth 3 old pence (Just over 1p in modern value).

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Peat – decayed vegetation, compressed which is dug up from the peat bogs and used as fuel.Peatscrapes – scars in the bog where the peat has been removed.Lazybeds – the correct name for large beds of earth after the peat has been removed.

Textual Analysis1. What impression of the speaker does the rhythm and

language of the first stanza create? 3

2. What features of Aunt Julia mentioned in stanzas one and two imply that she is a little eccentric?

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3. What message does the writer convey in stanza 3?2

4. What tasks does Aunt Julia carry out and what do we learn about her character from these?

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5. a) What mood is created in the final stanza?1

b) Give two examples of word choice that create this mood and explain how they do this.

26. Why is the word “angry” repeated in the final stanza?

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7. Throughout the poem Aunt Julia is linked with nature. How does the poet create this impression?

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MemorialEverywhere she dies. Everywhere I go she dies.No sunrise, no city square, no lurking beautiful mountainbut has her death in it.The silence of her dying sounds throughthe carousel of language. It’s a webon which laughter stitches itself. How can my handclasp another’s when between themis that thick death, that intolerable distance? She grieves for my grief. Dying, she tells methat bird dives from the sun, that fishleaps into it. No crocus is carved more gentlythan the way her dyingshapes my mind. – But I hear, too,the other words,black words that make the soundof soundlessness, that name the nowhereshe is continuously going into. Ever since she diedshe can’t stop dying. She makes meher elegy. I am a walking masterpiece,a true fictionof the ugliness of death.I am her sad music.

Vocabulary

Elegy – a reflective and often mournful style of poem.

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Textual Analysis

1. This poem explores how the death of a loved one can linger in someone’s work. How does the first stanza bring out this idea?

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2. a) What mood is created in stanza one? 1

b) Give two examples of word choice that contribute to this mood. 2

3. Give two examples of imagery used in stanza one and explain their effect. 4

4. What does the imagery used in stanza 2 tell us about how the writer’s work had been affected by his loss?

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5. In the final stanza MacCaig says “ever since she died she cannot stop dying.” In what sense does he mean this?

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6. In the final stanza the writer compares himself to forms of art. What is the effect if this comparison?

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Basking Shark

To stub an oar on a rock where none should be,To have it rise with a slounge out of the seaIs a thing that happened once (too often) to me.But not too often - though enough. I count as gainThat once I met, on a sea tin-tacked with rain,That roomsized monster with a matchbox brain.He displaced more than water. He shoggled meCenturies back – the decadent towneeShook on a wrong branch of his family tree.Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a springIs all the clearer. I saw me, in one fling,Emerging from the slime of everything.So who’s the monster? The thought made me grow paleFor twenty seconds while, sail after sail,The tail fin slid away and then the tail.

Vocabulary

Slounge – to skulk or act stealthily

Shoggled – shook

Decadent – self indulgent

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Textual Analysis

1. What experience does MacCaig describe in this poem and what does it make him reflect on?

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2. Identify two metaphors used to describe the shark and explain what they tell the reader about it.

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3. The speaker has a mixture of feelings towards the shark. With reference to the text (lines 2-6), explain what these feelings are and how they are revealed.

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4. With close reference to language, how does MacCaig develop the idea of ‘He displaced more than water’ in the rest of the stanza (stanza 3) and how does this further develop the idea of the evolutionary process

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5. a) What is meant by the line “shook the wrong branch of the family tree”?

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b) What is mean by ‘Swish up the dirt and, when it settles, a spring Is all the clearer.’

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6. The encounter with the shark caused the poet to reflect upon some big ideas. Comment on two phrases which suggest the poet reflected upon serious issues.

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Sounds of the Day

When a clatter came,It was horses crossing the ford.When the air creaked, it wasA lapwing seeing us off the premisesOf its private marsh. A snuffling puffTen yards from the boat was the tide blocking,Unblocking a hole in the rock.When the black drums rolled, it was waterFalling sixty feet into itself.

When the doorScraped shut, it was the endOf all 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 feelA bangle of ice around your wrist

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Before the whole hand goes numb.

Textual Analysis

1. Sounds of the Day is a poem about the breakdown of a relationship. How do the sounds mentioned in stanza one create:

a) A sense of the setting? 2b) A sense of the relationship ending?

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2. Explain what structural effects are used in stanzas two and three and the effect these have on the poem.

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3. What is the significance of the fire being “the quietest fire in the world”?

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4. What is the significance of the first line of stanza four?1

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5. a) What contrast is created between stanzas three and four? 2

b) What comparison is introduced in the final stanza? 2

c) Why is this comparison effective? 2

6. What message is the writer trying to communicate in the final line of the poem?

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Group Task(six groups required)Stage 1Each group should pick a different poem and prepare a presentation about the poem. You should include:

What the poem is about Its themes Its messages Any poetic techniques it uses How the poem makes you feel

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Stage 2Create a set of questions that will test your class mates’ knowledge of the poem. There must be at least 8 questions and the question paper should be worth a total of 20 marks.Create a marking scheme to go with your question paper.

Stage 3All groups should deliver their presentations.

Stage 41. Each group should pair with another group. 2. The groups should swap their questions.3. Once both groups have finished answering the question

paper the papers should be marked and discussed.4. Stages 1-3 should be repeated until all groups have

answered questions about all six poems.

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