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And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

Norman MacCaig

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Norman MacCaig
Age: 85 †
Born: 1910
Born: November 14
Died: 1996
Died: January 23
Poet
Edinburgh
Scotland
Norman Alexander MacCaig
Didn
Think
Thinking
Poetry
Second
Question
Taught
Literature

More quotes by Norman MacCaig

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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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I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.
Norman MacCaig
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I learned words, I learned words but half of them died from lack of exercise. And the ones I use often look at me with a look that whispers, Liar.
Norman MacCaig
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I don't think of myself all the time.
Norman MacCaig
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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
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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
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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
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I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.
Norman MacCaig
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If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.
Norman MacCaig
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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
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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
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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
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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
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When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.
Norman MacCaig
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I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.
Norman MacCaig
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Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
Norman MacCaig
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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
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Landscape is my religion. ...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches And floored with a skin of water.
Norman MacCaig