Norman MacCaig
“Scottish Text
Question”
Memorial
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Learning Intention
•We are learning to:
annotate the text
and identify the use
of poetic techniques.
Context
• In an interview MacCaig stated: ‘We look at an object with all the
previous experiences which lie behind us of what a tree is or what a
mountain is and since everybody’s experience is necessarily different
from everybody else’s, in a sense we are not looking at the same
mountain.’
• In the poem ‘Memorial’, published in 1973 in the collection The White
Bird, the poet describes the impact of a loved one’s death. Everything
has changed for him.
Activity: The big question
• Before reading: How does one deal with death of a loved one?
Question
•Discuss how MacCaig
organises the poem and
how he expresses his
sense of loss.
Images of loss
•In groups, pick out some images of loss
that are created in the poem.
•Highlight some words that helped create
these images.
Repetition and loss
• List examples of where MacCaig uses repetition and
explain what effect he achieves by using this
technique.
• MacCaig never mentions the woman’s name. he uses
‘she’ throughout the poem. Why does the poet do
this?
• MacCaig also uses a lot of verbs. List them and say
what tense they are in. What is the poet trying to do
here?
Context
• This poem is an elegy, a poem or song that is a lament for the dead, for a
beloved person in MacCaig’s life. That person is probably MacCaig’s sister,
Frances, who died in 1968 as this poem was published in 1971.
• Memorial is a sad and beautiful poem about how the sense of loss of the
poet’s dear one pervades every aspect of his life. Her death, he makes clear,
is not for him an event that has its place in the near past, already a part of
history.
• Instead the process of her dying stays with him constantly: the opening
states, “Everywhere she dies” and in the final stanza, “she can’t stop dying”.
Context
• MacCaig’s poetry is often characterised by its lightness of touch, his playful
use of language, particularly metaphor – but always to razor-sharp effect.
• Here, he retains razor-sharpness in his use of metaphor, but the playful,
light touch is entirely absent. Instead he is immersed in the “intolerable
distance” of death, painfully conscious of its “ugliness”, and painfully
conscious too of the all pervading absence of his dear one.
• MacCaig was an atheist. As such, in the face of death, there were no easy
comforts for him of promises of life or resurrection beyond the grave. For
him death presented an awful finality. Still, the act of writing such a
powerful, memorable and skilfully constructed poem was itself an act of
literary art that in a sense raised the poet’s consciousness above the
profound, melancholic state he experienced at this time.
Form and structure
• This poem is written in free verse, and like all of MacCaig’s poetry, the themes
and central ideas are readily accessible through conversational style and the
simple language.
• Written from a first person stance in the past tense, the poem is divided by
stanzas into three main sections.
• In the first stanza, the speaker introduces the subject of his meditation, the death
of a loved one. In the second he reflects and explores the impact of this painful
experience while reaching a conclusion of sorts in the final stanza, by reiterating
the assertion made in the first line of her death being everywhere, ever present.
• The fluidity and looseness of the structure also helps to reinforce the key message
of the poem which focuses on death and the grieving process. Death of a loved one
itself represents a formlessness, a loss of structure, the disintegration of close
bonds of love and affection. Hence the poet reflects this in the way he constructs
the poem.
Themes
• The central theme of the poem is the sense of unending grief that is
felt when someone we love dies.
• MacCaig creates a tone which is almost nihilistic and utterly
hopeless in its despairingly bleak outlook.
• Nevertheless, there is an occasional glimpse of optimism and beauty
contained within the image of the crocus, which is “never carved more
gently than in the way her dying shapes my mind.”
• This seems to imply one of the abiding effects of his grief is that it will
forever and indelibly continue to shape and impact on his creative
work.
Everywhere she dies. Everywhere I go she dies.
• The poem opens with the flat, slightly
puzzling statement: “Everywhere she
dies”.
• “Everywhere” is repeated for
reinforcement in the same line:
“Everywhere I go she dies”.
• The qualification “I go” helps us to
understand what is meant by this– the
poet cannot escape awareness of the
death of his loved one.
• These statements are simple, direct
and matter of fact.
• The juxtaposition of the “I” and the
“she” immediately informs us of the
bond between the speaker and the
subject of the poem.
• Blunt opening line
• Repetition of “Everywhere”
• “Go” – poet trying to move
on?
• “She” – loved one lacks
identity – ambiguous
• “Everywhere I go she died” Inversion
No sunrise, no city square, no lurking beautiful
mountain
• There follows a patterned list of places
where her death, for him, is to be found:
“No sunrise, no city square, no lurking
beautiful mountain.”
• The repeated use of the negative “no”
emphasises how inescapable and
ubiquitous her death is for him.
• The specific choice of the situations in
which he feels her death most keenly is
also significant as they are not usually
associated with death - a city square is
usually bustling with people, while
sunrise and mountains are associated
with providing aesthetic pleasure.
• This suggests that, such is the impact of
her death, these places and experiences
have now become tainted with death and
grief pervades every facet of his existence.
• “No” – Emphasising the negatives
(Repetition)
• Sunrise, city square, beautiful mountain –
typical romantic venues (LOOKING AT
PICTURES?)
• “lurking” – present tense
• Listing – building up to a climax
• Syllables increase as line goes on
but has her death in it.
•But – enjambment – emphasis (Change?)
•Her – again, lacks identity
•Full stop - finality
The silence of her dying sounds through
• Silence…sounds – alliteration (sibilance)
• Dying – present tense again
• Poet focusing on sound – silence overpowering him?
The silence of her dying sounds through the
carousel of language, it's a web
• The poet employs paradox in the line “the silence of her
dying sounds through the carousel of language”; this works
in the same way as the phrase “a deafening silence” – a
silence so intense it makes an impact in the way a loud
noise would.
• Here, this silence is sounding through the “carousel of
language”. In this metaphor language is compared to
something light-hearted and frivolous, so a carousel is
something that goes round in a pointless fashion, going
nowhere, purely designed for amusement. By contrast the
“silence” of death seems much more profound and serious.
• By contrast the “silence” of death seems much more
profound and serious. There follows a switch of metaphor
in which the silence becomes a “web”, with its
connotations of a deadly trap. On it, “laughter” is doomed
to become stuck – it “stitches itself”.
• Carousel – going
round
• Language – words
of sympathy
• It’s – referring to
the silence
• Web – caught up in
it but also not part
of it
on which laughter stitches itself. How can my
hand
• Laughter – loved ones (attempting to comfort him)
• How can my hand….. – poet’s feelings of despair
clasp another's when between them
• MacCaig finishes the stanza on a
deeply pessimistic note with a
rhetorical question, asking how
his hand can “clasp another's”
when death…
• Clasp – tight grip / holding onto
memories
• Another’s – holding hands /
shaking hands / thoughts of future
love?
is that thick death, that intolerable distance?
• Thick death – metaphor (Grief is like a
fog that we cannot get through)
• Intolerable distance – LINK to Visiting
Hour
• Use of rhetorical question – idea of being
isolated
• Poet’s feelings in Stanza 1 - Denial
• …described as that
“intolerable distance”,
lies between them.
• Death is described as
“thick”, an inevitable,
impenetrable barrier
between the living and
the dead.
Stanza 2
She grieves for my grief. Dying, she tells me
• The opening of this stanza
involves a subversion of the
usual order by asserting “She
grieves for my grief”.
• Again this reinforces the bond
the two shared while she was
alive implying she couldn’t bear
to see him sad and suffering.
• She grieves – feelings of love /
concern / sympathy towards
the poet.
• Dying – present tense
that bird dives from the sun, that fish
• In his melancholic imagination she
is permanently caught in the act of
dying, and he pictures her telling
him how “that bird dives from the
sun” and “that fish leaps into it”.
• Both of these images represent a
reversal of the normal order of
things.
• The bird should fly towards the
sun, and the fish should dive into
the depths of the sea away from it.
Death, by implication, is seen as a
reversal of the natural state of
living.
• Nature imagery –
connotations of natural
order / creates a sense of
calmness
leaps into it. No crocus is carved more gently
• These images are, in their way, things
of beauty in their constructs of
language.
• MacCaig acknowledges this in the
comparison of the way his mind is
shaped by them to the way a crocus is
“carved” or shaped by nature.
• A stark contrast is made, though, at
the end of the stanza. Reinforcing this
contrast is the use of both a dash to
indicate a change of direction and
contrastive conjunction “but” to do
likewise.
• Crocus…carved –
alliteration
• Carved – connotations of
intricacy / pain?
• Crocus – symbol for hope
and renewal?
than the way her dying
shapes my mind. – But I hear, too,
•Use of dash
•Hear – links back to the ideas of sounds
the other words,
• What follows is a metaphorical
image of him hearing “other
words, black words” which
whisper to him of the horror of
the oblivion of the grave.
• This is conveyed in a number of
ways: again by a paradox,
specifically the oxymoronic
“sound of soundlessness”, which
echoes the earlier paradox in
stanza one.
• Words – condolences and
sympathies from friends
and well-wishers
black words that make the sound
•Black – metaphor – connotations of death / misery
of soundlessness, that name the nowhere
• There is also a chilling image of
her “continuously” going into a
“nowhere” these black words
“name”.
• Death is presented as a kind of
metaphorical journey that has
no destination and never ends.
• Soundlessness – Wife has died.
Sibilance
• Nowhere – Heaven?
• That name – God? Poet
appears to be unconvinced
she is continuously going into.
• Into – vague / ambiguous. Connotations of death
• This stanza appears to be a flashback to when the loved
one was alive.
• Poet’s feelings in Stanza 2 - Anger
Stanza 3
Ever since she died
•Back in the present
moment, after loved one’s
death
•Died – end of line
EMPHASIS
• Like stanza one, this stanza opens
with a flat, matter-of-fact
statement that recapitulates the
opening line: “Ever since she
died/she can’t stop dying.”
• The enigmatic nature of this
statement is now clear to us in the
overall context of the poem. We
realise it is within the poet’s
consciousness that she “can’t stop
dying”– his psyche is perpetually
tortured by this overwhelming
experience.
she can't stop dying. She makes me
•She – enjambment
•Dying – present tense
•Can’t stop – involuntary
•She makes me – his grief is
her fault / feelings of anger
and denial
•Blunt
• A further simple statement
follows as he begins to reach his
conclusion: “She makes me/her
elegy”.
• An elegy is song or poem
associated with death,
emphasising that his grief is so
raw, so profound and allconsuming, he identifies entirely
with it to the exclusion of all else
- he has become a physical
embodiment of a lament.
her elegy. I am a walking masterpiece,
• Her elegy – He personifies
her death and the grief she
has left behind
• Masterpiece – strength of
grief / connotations of
greatness / he is the
ultimate example of grief
• He now extends the notion of
himself as the product of a
literary imagination when he
describes himself as a “walking
masterpiece/a true fiction of the
ugliness of death.”
• The term “masterpiece” is used
satirically to convey how
successful his transformation
into a mascot for death, despair
and despondency has been.
a true fiction
•Paradox
•Her death doesn’t feel
real
• The oxymoronic “true fiction”
conveys jointly the idea of him
being a (reversed) literary
representation of death’s horror
or “ugliness”, and “true” conveys
the completeness of this
transformation.
of the ugliness of death.
•Ugliness – this image doesn’t fit in with the rest of
the poem
•Connotations of dying with an illness
I am her sad music.
• Sentence on its own
• Relates again to the ideas
of sound
• Poet accepting of sound
again?
• Poet’s feelings - Acceptance
• The final simple line sums up
one of the central ideas in the
poem: “I am her sad music”.
• This hopelessly pessimistic note
again emphasises the ceaseless,
all-encompassing nature of the
grief and sorrow that consume
him and pervade every aspect of
his consciousness.