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Norman MacCaig Quotes
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Type: Poet Quotes Category: Scottish Poet Quotes Date of Birth: November 14, 1910 Date of Death: January 23, 1996 Nationality: Scottish Find on Amazon: Norman MacCaig Related Authors: George Byron Alexander Smith William Falconer Ian Hamilton Finlay Robert Burns Robert Service Robert W. Service |
A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.
Norman MacCaig All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about. Norman MacCaig All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed. Norman MacCaig And also I'm not good at inventing things. And also I'm not good at inventing things. I couldn't invent a plot. I couldn't invent a character. Norman MacCaig And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it. Norman MacCaig And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody. Norman MacCaig And it's impossible for me to read Henry James. Norman MacCaig And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping. Norman MacCaig And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so. Norman MacCaig Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood. Norman MacCaig But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true! Norman MacCaig But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person. Norman MacCaig However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird. Norman MacCaig I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense. Norman MacCaig I don't think of myself all the time. Norman MacCaig I find it's impossible for me to read Proust. Norman MacCaig I just didn't want to shoot other people. Norman MacCaig I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry. Norman MacCaig I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out. Norman MacCaig I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry. Norman MacCaig I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that. Norman MacCaig I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century. Norman MacCaig I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now. Norman MacCaig I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own. Norman MacCaig If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex. Norman MacCaig In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry. Norman MacCaig In some ways I'm a reticent man, and for quite a number of years there wasn't very much of my real true deep feelings in my writing. Norman MacCaig It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely. Norman MacCaig People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share. Norman MacCaig The nineteenth century novels came from a time when there was no television and people had time to read novels in three volumes. Norman MacCaig There are books up there I haven't read for many years but I wouldn't put them out. I never know when I might want to read them again. Norman MacCaig There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books. Norman MacCaig Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thump. And that's not the only reason. Norman MacCaig Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away. Norman MacCaig When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me. Norman MacCaig When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man. Norman MacCaig When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books. Norman MacCaig When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous. Norman MacCaig |
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